My SDR Setup 10+ Years in Making

[txktoday]

I ordered my first SDR dongle in 2013 and tried on and off since then to get a trunk scanner setup going for usage in the news room. Never could really get it going like I wanted. A few weeks ago I put Claude Code on the job and wow. I now have my dream setup.

Currently running off 4 dongles and a spare macmini as I wait for some Airspy R2's to come in. Anyone got any tips for cheap and compact setups? I'm thinking a Intel NUC with a couple of R2's is the best bet? I'd like to deploy 2 more setups to some other sties. I'm recording everything on 2 P25 systems currently and that is taking up all 4 dongles. I'd like to add some conventional frequencies also. Hopefully the R2's help with that. Transcript is being analyzed by AI and it alerts the news room to any breaking news we can cover.

Never again will I pay $600 for a scanner. (I've probably bought 20 over the last 15 years.)

 

[ChrisABQ]

Can you elaborate on the "Claude Code"? Did AI write the whole thing?

 

[txktoday]

Can you elaborate on the "Claude Code"? Did AI write the whole thing?

100%. It did use preexisting projects like trunk-recorder though.

 

[dimab]

I’m running a local transcription setup as well with a web UI and bunch of alerting. What model are you using for text to speech? I’ve found that whipser large v3 turbo does it fine most of the time. Definitely far from perfect. I’ve tuned bunch of text hints and corrections for street names.
I’ve running sdrtrunk for a p25 system and few analog channels.

 

[txktoday]

I’m running a local transcription setup as well with a web UI and bunch of alerting. What model are you using for text to speech? I’ve found that whipser large v3 turbo does it fine most of the time. Definitely far from perfect. I’ve tuned bunch of text hints and corrections for street names.
I’ve running sdrtrunk for a p25 system and few analog channels.

I've been running the small whisper but i just did a test and am switching to large turbo now. Thanks!

 

[merlin]

10 years and I am still upgrading and modifying my setups.
That whisper works good for me given my hearing is going downhill.

 

[rdmcvicar]

I think you're on the right track with the Airspys; I think they're good for dollars to MHz and only tend to use the 2.4 MHz types (Nano3 being my favorite) if chasing a few scattered freqs.

I have good luck with surplus auction-type i5-8s and up, spending something in the $25 range here in Wisconsin. Then Linux Mint, trunk-recorder and/or rtlsdr_airband (all feeding rdio-scanner), and then sending them off into the wild!

 

[upnorth64]

Nice setup!!! AI has helped me achieve what I wanted in my setup too. I am also trying out whisperback turbo. Not perfect but it does well enough.