As everyone knows SDR is starting to explode amongst us Hams. Unfortunately, all these set up instructions and videos are all outdated and serve no purpose. I believe that every Ham should have SDRSharp, Unitrunker and DSD+ up and running and a requirement for those in ARES and RACES..
I have a simple request to anyone that wants to better our community with a real set of instructions and/or video on how to get these programs working. Your contribution would help thousands of hams that want to do this but haven't been to successfully accomplish this.
Good Luck and Hope Some take this challenge!
I've thought about putting together some more simplistic guides towards getting this stuff all working together to help people out but, to be honest, it's not that simple and no guide(s) are ever going to make it really that simple. It's never going to be a truly point-and-click thing where everything just magically works from the gitgo - it requires time and effort to learn these newer tools of the trade, so to speak.
Using a single SDR stick with analog audio is easy: load the Zadig drivers, pick an SDR application/program like SDR# (obviously the most popular one
but not the only SDR application out there and far from the most capable), make sure it recognizes the stick, then basically start up the app/program and go from there tuning in what you want to monitor.
Want to use Unitrunker and two SDR sticks to do decent trunked comms monitoring? It's a bit more complex but still doable in a relatively easy manner - there are still some issues with this process at least I think are still issues, the biggest one for me has always been simply being able to monitor or "hold" on one specific talkgroup at a time which no SDR software seems to do yet - I just to use an SDR stick r two like an actual trunk tracking scanner with the same basic functionality and so far nothing has been able to do it. I could be that something exists to do it in a relatively easy manner but, in my experience with SDR so far nothing does it quite like having an actual trunk tracking scanner can. Surely somebody out there will be able to code something someday that does precisely this with an SDR stick or two; if I was a coder or developer of any kind I would have done my best to create it by now.
Now, having said that, when you involve DSD or DSD+ into this mix for the purposes of decoding digital communications, things get a lot more complex because you end up using multiple programs to get the task done which is a requirement since no one single program can or most likely ever will do it all in one (sadly). The fact that using some "virtual audio cable" software in such situations almost as a priority (meaning you can't really do the things with DSD and DSD+ without it) is just another thing to consider as well, and there are several such virtual audio cable drivers out there, some are free, some are donationware (pay what you feel it's worth), and theirs one big commercial one which is fairly expensive overall.
I know from reading the other thread that you're having difficulty with getting all this stuff working for you, Usmc70_14, and I don't mean to sound harsh when I say this but, creating another thread asking for someone to create such guides when you've already got one thread in existence (that you created) basically stating your case probably won't get far; in fact the threads could probably be merged at this point or else maybe this one just needs to "die a quick death" - I'm just stating an opinion here so please don't blast me for it.
It took me like 2 hours to figure out the driver situation and SDR# the very first time I ever used my RTL stick (purchased just over 1.5 years ago iirc) and I was going only by figuring it all out myself. I did attempt to use one of those older guides to get trunk tracking working with just one RTL stick and I had basically no real success with it so I gave up on that aspect. In order of difficulty I'd say simple analog simplex comms are the easiest, then perhaps analog trunked comms next, then digital simplex comms followed by digital trunked comms being the most difficult. Encrypted comms are irrelevant and not even brought into the fray in such situations so that's a moot point.
It's not that hard, really, and the guides that exist even now are more than adequate but yes, most of them could stand a bit of fine tuning (pun very much intended given the nature of this forum) and perhaps some more easy to comprehend instructions, sure, but most people pick up on it fairly easy.
I don't own this book but I have read some samples of the guts of it and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in SDR related hobbies:
www.amazon.com/Hobbyists-Guide-RTL-SDR-Software-Defined-ebook/dp/B00KCDF1QI
It has an absolute ton of info in it (looks primarily like the owners of the RTL-SDR website basically took most of the website and put it in book form but I could be wrong on that in some respects. It's half price at the moment and even if you don't own a Kindle device (tablet, etc) there's Kindle software for Windows and OS X if you need it so you'd still be able to make use of the eBook nature of the publication.
While Ham Radio is evolving rapidly given the newer digital comms technologies and other aspects, I don't think I'd ever consider using some of these new tools as a requirement for participation - I get your meaning with that last tidbit you stated in the first paragraph about ARES and RACES but, given those members typically are actual Hams, they'd know this stuff takes time to get a good grasp on and no simple guides are ever going to get that done for 'em.
It's all hands-on, just as it always has been...
And as always, this has been my $.02 and a lot of spare change thrown in for good measure.
