An idea: RTLSDR and single board computer

[Markb]

Hi fellow RTL users.

Has anyone tried using an RTL with a single board computer, such as a Beagle Board, Beagle Bone, Raspberry Pi or anything along those lines?
I'm thinking that this could make a pretty neat portable radio with some pretty flexible functionality running analog FM, DSD for digital formats or ???? Add a touchscreen with a scanner-type GUI or a keyboard & monitor.
My other thought is that a person could set up one of these units and give them WiFi functionality to make them stream audio for a feed. Very small footprint and all you'd need is power and WiFi access.
I know very little about Linux or any of the other applicable programming languages, but I'd like to start learning. Does this sound doable?
Maybe more trouble than it's worth, but could wind up being cheaper than a P25 scanner and more capable.

 

[KC9WPK]

I got it up and running on my PI.

 

[KS4JU]

Shoot, if you do have it working decoding an usable audio signal, how about some details on what software you are using?

I have spent a good bit of time experimenting with this using the Raspberry Pi and a MK802. You can install the RTL drivers on these units and get it to recognize the device. The real problem comes in when you actually try to run a DSP program on the Pi or MK802 to make use of the RTL2832u. The low powered ARM processors in these devices can't adequately handle the signal decoding. This is not to say that this will never happen, because there is currently a dual core version of the MK802 out that may eventually have a shot at it. There are even plans for a quad core MK802 type pc in the future. Right now, the lowest powered PC that I have used with the RTL2832u is a dual core 1.6 GHz processor. The signal processing software will keep the CPU pegged at around 75% to 100%, but it still works pretty well.

 

[Markb]

So it sounds like at this point, like it's barely doable, if I'm hearing you guys right.
Shoot, are you just using simple tuning software, or have you tried DSD to decode digital formats?

 

[KC9WPK]

Shoot, if you do have it working decoding an usable audio signal, how about some details on what software you are using?

I got SDRSharp up and running, It would lock and hang until I switched to a class 10 SD card. Now it does still lock up and hang sometimes but not nearly as much I still have lots of playing to do. And will keep you all informed as I make progress.

 

[KC9WPK]

So it sounds like at this point, like it's barely doable, if I'm hearing you guys right.
Shoot, are you just using simple tuning software, or have you tried DSD to decode digital formats?

Correct it "works" but is not stable. I am trying different linux builds on the PI to see if that might free up some resources.

 

[SCPD]

Hello shoot!

Are you using Mono to build SDR# and if so, are you using AOT for native code generation or are you running JIT?

 

[KC9WPK]

I found something that runs with lower resources:

Simple and low resource scanner: rtl_fm : RTLSDR
rtl-sdr