SDR Inquiry

[KI5UFO]

I'm new to the theory of using SDR, to be used for base purposes at the moment. I'm looking at the Airspy(open to other reciever ideas) but I do have one question. I want to use more than one program, my setup would consist of one program monitoring trunked systems to identify new TgId's and possibly one or two others monitoring the rest of the band,not trunked. How many programs can one AirSpy or similar receiver module handle without bogging each other down being it is software based?

 

[sonm10]

+1 for Airspy!

1 SDR receiver per software (some require more). That's why many buy RTL dongles which are cheaper.
I would invest one of each to start (1 Airspy, 1 RTL).

 

[boatbod]

Once an application has opened the SDR device it has exclusive control over it, so no other application will be able to use it at the same time.

When actively receiving, an Airspy Mini can tune either a 3Mhz or a 6Mhz slice of spectrum, and an Airspy R2 can tune 2.5Mhz or 10Mhz. Everything the application does for demod/decode, necessarily has to be within this slice of spectrum. If it wants to look outside of this spectrum it will send commands to the SDR hardware to retune the center frequency.