SDRTrunk

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Reducing CPU/Load Temps in Laptops, etc

After hours of tweaking with SDRTrunk, I've found a few things to reduce your laptop's CPU horsepower/usage, or otherwise lessen it to lower the workload and temps. Laptops internals will run pretty hot while running this progam, with so much going on. I would rather side with lower temps than higher.

1. Disable the Spectrum/Waterfall displays or minimize each. Logical sense as it takes a great deal of shared CPU to update the FFT video. I cut the refresh rate to 14 frames/sec. Also set the FFT to a low 2048. This didn't lessen the CPU temps much. But if you disable both, CPU core temps will drop 20-30 F. from running the live Spectrum/waterfall. Liveable at times. I just want to get laptop CPU temps below staying at 200 degrees F. for hours. Intel specs claim this is still "within safe operable chip temps," but l dunno. I also minimize SDRTrunk to the system tray bar every so often, then you can't see it, but you can still hear it getting calls. This will drop temps back to the 130-150 degrees range for a time. I also prop it up on a dual fan cooler tray underneath for airflow.

2. Set your laptop resolution back a bit, I tried 1280x720 (from 1366x768) and it dropped CPU temps by nearly 10 degrees F and a few percent less of CPU load. The numbers get slightly bigger, a bit easier on my eyes. I can't see a drawback here unless you're a finicky type. YMMV.

I'm swear that I'm gonna put this guy Denny in my will.
 
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4 Alpha 5

I am playing with version 4 Alpha 5. rPi 3+, 2 flightaware yellow dongles
It still frequently ends up at IDLE and then doesn't recover without a program shutdown.

I received the following errors before a crash (not IDLE):
17:21:55.865 ERROR i.g.d.s.t.u.USBTransferProcessor - Error while processing USB transfer buffers [212MB/212MB 99%]
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
17:22:02.305 INFO i.g.d.a.b.AudioBroadcaster - [Broadcastify] status: Disconnected [212MB/212MB 99%]
17:22:03.468 ERROR i.g.d.s.t.u.USBTransferProcessor - Error while processing USB transfer buffers [212MB/212MB 99%]
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
17:22:09.905 ERROR i.g.d.s.t.u.USBTransferProcessor - Error while processing USB transfer buffers [212MB/212MB 99%]
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
17:22:13.676 ERROR i.g.d.s.t.u.USBTransferProcessor - Error while processing USB transfer buffers [212MB/212MB 99%]
java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space

I have reduced it to two dongles. The control dongle is set to 0.288 mhz and the other dongle is set to 2.4mhz BW, but this did not seem to help the stability.

ECR
 

DSheirer

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Java ran out of memory and crashed. The only recovery is to restart the application. The rpi may not have enough resources to run the application with the current channelizer I just added. For alpha 6 I was going to allow the user to select between the new and the older channelizer which may be better for the rpi.

Denny
 
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Is there anything which I can do in my settings to help with the memory issue? I have tried lowering the BW of the dongles. What usually causes it to use more memory? Can I add swap or zram? I already have a little of both. top did not show a memory crunch, only very little swap usage and a fair amount of free.


Java ran out of memory and crashed. The only recovery is to restart the application. The rpi may not have enough resources to run the application with the current channelizer I just added. For alpha 6 I was going to allow the user to select between the new and the older channelizer which may be better for the rpi.

Denny
 

DSheirer

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It sounds like you're hitting the key points with the tuner sample rates. You can also disable the spectral display by right-clicking on the spectrum or waterfall and select 'disable'. Do the same to reenable the spectral display if you need to monitor the tuner.
 

nated1992

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I love this! Download it yesterday. Works for a local p25 system great. Having some trouble getting it to just play the talkgroups I want, but overall a amazing application cant wait to see what future developments hold!
 

nated1992

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I have the program running, everything works however it gets to a point and the signal goes to ideal I have to restart the application or restart the machine and it works normally for a while then repeat, I have two systems and two usb recivers if I try and listen to both systems at the same time this issue appears much quicker.
 

DRL-XM43

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I have the program running, everything works however it gets to a point and the signal goes to ideal I have to restart the application or restart the machine and it works normally for a while then repeat, I have two systems and two usb recivers if I try and listen to both systems at the same time this issue appears much quicker.

What is the spec on your H/W?
What does it say in the error log?
 

nated1992

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Windows 7 x64 with two RTL2832U+R820T2 receivers wrote new serial numbers to identify them, there is a log called sdr_app that has some information about buffering but dosnt look out of place.
 

DSheirer

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I have the program running, everything works however it gets to a point and the signal goes to ideal I have to restart the application or restart the machine and it works normally for a while then repeat, I have two systems and two usb recivers if I try and listen to both systems at the same time this issue appears much quicker.

Do you have autotune enabled for each of the tuners? Tuner frequency drift can cause the decoder to lose sync on the signal.
 

nated1992

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Do you have autotune enabled for each of the tuners? Tuner frequency drift can cause the decoder to lose sync on the signal.

I changed the gain controls and got everything worked out. It is preforming much better but is still dropping out after a few hours unless restarting
 

TiptonScanner

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I learned the hard way not to log everything!

So I used UniTrunker for about two months, then I found SDRTRUNK. Amazing software BTW. I seen under channels there was a logging feature, I thought "Cool if anything ever happens I would be able to go back and look at the logs"

Then I proceeded to run SDRTRUNK almost 24/7 for about 7 months on the statewide SAFE-T system, AND NEVER CHECKED THE FOLDER SIZE!

I went to change some aliases about 30 minutes ago. So I tried to back up the SDRTRUNK folder in my user folder and when ever I would try to copy it the computer would freeze up. I think I know why now.
 

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nated1992

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The way I understand it event logs writes everything in the events tab that scrolls to a file,
If you where wanting error logs best I can tell and from my experience this will auto create if there is a error in the same folder as your .jar file.
 
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SDRTrunk Freezing Up?

If your PC or laptop doesn't have enough CPU horsepower, SDRTrunk will slow down and stop processing and then just freeze up. Especially running 2 control channels at the same time. You need at least an Intel I-3 (four core) chip or above (I-5 or I-7) or an AMD A-4 (four core) or above to work with any success. Any budget PC won't cut it. You'll run out of CPU in a few seconds. Even if you check your CPU load, above 40% usage won't leave enough headroom. You can try my tricks listed but I have tried it on a few budget Pentium Dual Cores and it will run for a few seconds on these PCs at 40% CPU load and then stall and then freeze the whole thing. You can also cut the "Traffic Pool" (max amount of calls) setting back to 3-4 but it may not help. We've got a lot of stuff being processed at the same time, and a four core chip is really needed to handle it all.
A few times, the program will freeze up for no apparent reason, gremlins.

Be Sure to un check your Logging/Recording functions or you'll end up with a few Gigs of logs. I did!

As for my two SDR tuners, once I set up the first one, then added the second one, the program set it all up to automatic, I can't fiddle with the gain settings. Better that way.
 
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nated1992

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If your PC or laptop doesn't have enough CPU horsepower, SDRTrunk will slow down and stop processing and then just freeze up. Especially running 2 control channels at the same time. You need at least an Intel I-3 (four core) chip or above (I-5 or I-7) or an AMD A-4 (four core) or above to work with any success. Any budget PC won't cut it. You'll run out of CPU in a few seconds. Even if you check your CPU load, above 40% usage won't leave enough headroom. You can try my tricks listed but I have tried it on a few budget Pentium Dual Cores and it will run for a few seconds on these PCs at 40% CPU load and then stall and then freeze the whole thing. You can also cut the "Traffic Pool" (max amount of calls) setting back to 3-4 but it may not help. We've got a lot of stuff being processed at the same time, and a four core chip is really needed to handle it all.
A few times, the program will freeze up for no apparent reason, gremlins.

Be Sure to un check your Logging/Recording functions or you'll end up with a few Gigs of logs. I did!

As for my two SDR tuners, once I set up the first one, then added the second one, the program set it all up to automatic, I can't fiddle with the gain settings. Better that way.

Ummm I run it on a windows 7 machine with a Pentium... I also run it on a raspberry pi... no issues at all. The traffic pool default is 4...
 

mtindor

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Denny,

I have not tried to use SDRTRunk in a few years, and it looks a bit different/foreign to me. For the life of me I can't figure out how to create an LTR "system" that will be scanned. This is the first time I've attempted to set up LTR trunking. As far as I got was adding 5 "channels" using the same tuner. I have set all five channels to use the LTR decoder. Obviously LTR does not have a control channel, and thus it must scan the channels continually to ensure that it grabs any trunking data and plays audio.

But if I select to "enable" more than one channel, it seems to require that a dongle be available for each channel that I want to enable.

I am sure very few people these days care about an application that trunks LTR, but I'd really like to try to do so on SDRTrunk. Can you give me any pointers? The LTR system I am trying to monitor is extremely close by -- We are talking 50-60 dB signals. But when I look at the waterfall, it "looks" like it is barely picking up the channels. And it's having an extremely hard time decoding any LTR databursts.

The databursts are clear and easily readible when I run these frequencies through LTR Analyzer. But SDRTrunk seems to have a verify difficult time even determining the LCN for each of these channels even though, in my estimation, it shouldn't take more than 60 seconds for it to figure out the LCNs based upon the frequency in which the databursts on each channel occur.

Do you have any recommendations for me? Should I start another thread for this question?

Thanks

Mike
 

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DSheirer

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I have not tried to use SDRTRunk in a few years, and it looks a bit different/foreign to me. For the life of me I can't figure out how to create an LTR "system" that will be scanned.

Mike, It doesn't scan the LCNs. You'll have to create a channel for each LCN and enable it.

But if I select to "enable" more than one channel, it seems to require that a dongle be available for each channel that I want to enable.

It should use just 1 tuner if it can fit all of the frequencies within the bandwidth of that tuner. Otherwise, it will need a second tuner.

The LTR system I am trying to monitor is extremely close by -- We are talking 50-60 dB signals. But when I look at the waterfall, it "looks" like it is barely picking up the channels. And it's having an extremely hard time decoding any LTR databursts.

The little bit of spectrum I can see in the screenshots is not showing any signals that look like LTR idle bursts. It looks like you might need to adjust the gain on the tuner(s). It also looks like you might have some bleedover from the FM broadcast band. The only signal I see active in the second screenshot is to the far right, but it doesn't align with any of the configured channels showing in the spectrum panel.

The databursts are clear and easily readible when I run these frequencies through LTR Analyzer. But SDRTrunk seems to have a very difficult time even determining the LCN for each of these channels even though, in my estimation, it shouldn't take more than 60 seconds for it to figure out the LCNs based upon the frequency in which the databursts on each channel occur.

The decoder will determine the LCNs on the first successfully decoded idle burst or from the first call. The LTR decoder in sdrtrunk is somewhat sensitive to frequency offset, meaning that if the PPM on the tuner is mis-adjusted, or if the transmitted signal is off frequency too much, it prevents the decoder from filtering out the demodulated signal's DC component quickly enough to lock onto the signal and decode the idle bursts. Each idle burst has 2 data messages. However, if you have a (continous) transmission on the channel, it will respond quickly enough to decode the call and it will then decode the LCN number from those transmissions.

Denny
 

mtindor

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<snip>

Denny

Thanks, Denny. I did manage to figure it out / get it working. I did have to drop the gain down very significantly, which isn't a problem in this case since the LTR system is so cclose by. It's a 0.5 PPM dongle. For the most part it is dead on, but as you mentioned some of the LTR channels are off frequency enough to not be detected sometimes during normal databursts. But when there is actual traffic on one of the LCNs, SDRTrunk does pick up the traffic and data sent during the traffic just fine.

I'm glad I got it working. I could find no other LTR trunking solution out there anywhere that did not require DOS.

Mike
 
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