DSD-NEO help

[bobruzzo]

I downloaded this program to use on my Windows PC but it seems I need "Radio Reference API" in order to download the system I want to monitor. There's way too many hoops to jump thru trying to figure out how to get this working. Is there step by step instructions somewhere? The menu is too cryptic. I got it running but its not doing much.

 

[RobDLG]

There are multiple DSD-neo threads here in the forums, but this one is active.

I haven't tested recent versions, but I posted details of a test with RTL-SDR Blog V4 on Linux here. I had to specify the active control channel on the command line.

 

[arancormonk]

I downloaded this program to use on my Windows PC but it seems I need "Radio Reference API" in order to download the system I want to monitor. There's way too many hoops to jump thru trying to figure out how to get this working. Is there step by step instructions somewhere? The menu is too cryptic. I got it running but its not doing much.

can you share the full command line arguments? not clear without that what it's trying to do.

premium RR subscription is required to import systems, the API is already enabled if you download my builds off GitHub. you appear to have/done both...so that should be fine. under the trunking control menu there is a radio reference important menu, you just have to enter your username in and password when it asks. the password is never written to disk, so it's only good for that session. but imported systems will remain and can be reloaded without a password.

im slowly iterationing over different behaviors of the terminal UI to be more user friendly, but ncurses kinda sucks... I recently reorganized the menu to represent the programs signal flow, but what makes sense to me is probably not as friendly as it could be... open to suggestions/PRs to improve it.

 

[nd5y]

One thing that needs to be changed or made permanently adjustable is the low input level warning. -40 is a relatively strong signal for my SDR.

 

[arancormonk]

One thing that needs to be changed or made permanently adjustable is the low input level warning. -40 is a relatively strong signal for my SDR.

ill have to reevaluate the algorithm that flags the warning, it's supposed to use normalized symbol energy into the slicer for "good" decode and should be dongle agnostic, but maybe it's too conservative. are you actually experiencing overload/spurs?

 

[nd5y]

ill have to reevaluate the algorithm that flags the warning, it's supposed to use normalized symbol energy into the slicer for "good" decode and should be dongle agnostic, but maybe it's too conservative. are you actually experiencing overload/spurs?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I have a RTL-SDR V3 and V4 with FM broacast band filters. They behave almost identically. The V4 has fewer spurs or images.
With no antenna, no signal, LNA gain at 0 they both show about -66 to -68 dBFS on Gqrx.
With no antenna, no signal, LNA gain maxed out at 49.6 they both show about -50 to -57 dBFS on Gqrx.
Hardware AGC seems to be useless and appears to overload the waterfall display on Gqrx. I don't know if any of that is important with DSD-neo.

I am within a couple miles of most of the local towers. NOAA weather makes the range of about 159-166 MHz nearly useless. Local sheriff on 152.15 makes the lower end of the band nearly useless when they are on the air. There are a few stations in the 453-460 and 855-858 range nearby that do the same thing but not as bad as VHF.

I set up a DSD-neo config, frequency and talkgroup files to scan some conventional DMR VHF repeaters (154-156 MHz) about 25-40 miles away. They show signal strength of around -56 or higher and decode most of the time. I set rtl_gain to around 32 and rtl_sql to -57 and it seems to scan and decode properly most of the time but I get RF clipping and low input warnings regardless of what rtl_gain is set to. I assume rtl_gain=0 is the same as hardware AGC which makes it worse and doesn't work.
I can use the menu and set low input warning to -60 to prevent low input warnings but that setting isn't saved and I don't see it in the .ini file.

 

[arancormonk]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I have a RTL-SDR V3 and V4 with FM broacast band filters. They behave almost identically. The V4 has fewer spurs or images.
With no antenna, no signal, LNA gain at 0 they both show about -66 to -68 dBFS on Gqrx.
With no antenna, no signal, LNA gain maxed out at 49.6 they both show about -50 to -57 dBFS on Gqrx.
Hardware AGC seems to be useless and appears to overload the waterfall display on Gqrx. I don't know if any of that is important with DSD-neo.

I am within a couple miles of most of the local towers. NOAA weather makes the range of about 159-166 MHz nearly useless. Local sheriff on 152.15 makes the lower end of the band nearly useless when they are on the air. There are a few stations in the 453-460 and 855-858 range nearby that do the same thing but not as bad as VHF.

I set up a DSD-neo config, frequency and talkgroup files to scan some conventional DMR VHF repeaters (154-156 MHz) about 25-40 miles away. They show signal strength of around -56 or higher and decode most of the time. I set rtl_gain to around 32 and rtl_sql to -57 and it seems to scan and decode properly most of the time but I get RF clipping and low input warnings regardless of what rtl_gain is set to. I assume rtl_gain=0 is the same as hardware AGC which makes it worse and doesn't work.
I can use the menu and set low input warning to -60 to prevent low input warnings but that setting isn't saved and I don't see it in the .ini file.

the low input warning level now persists in the ini: runtime: persist the low-input warning threshold as [input] input_war… · arancormonk/dsd-neo@e0014a7