SSB through RTL-SDR ??? Brand new can i get a helping hand?

[Cyric30]

Greetings All
First off, i am totally new to this, i mean i had not heard of software defined Radio till this morning when i got to playing with another program. so please forgive my ignorance.

Here's the Story, i have been playing with a suite of programs for sailing/boating under an unbrella name Navigatrix

Navigatrix.net - A Voyager's Companion • View topic - Navigatrix 0.5 (August 2015) - A Voyager's Companion

In this suite are programs called RTLSDR and AISDecoder which can be integrated into OpenCPN (a chart plotting program) it lets you view boats with AIS beacons in real time on your plotter (Supposedly i havent seen it work yet )

Ok As i researched the RTL2832U Dongle and RTLSDR it talked about, i found you could listen to many (forgive my lack of proper terms) Bands/Frequencies?. such as AM,FM, and HAM radio type signals with the RTLSDR program very cool in of its self.

This lead to my question (and the reason for this long winded post) can SSB Bands be revived by one of these inexpensive dongles to hear maritime SSB communications? if so where can i find more info?

In my search i couldn't find an answer, or if i did it was beyond my meager knowledge to understand all the technical terms at this point .

This dongle/software program might be cheap backup in case of primary SSb failure being able to receive weather is one of those things you don't want to be on the water without.


Thank you for taking the time and attention to deal with a very green newbie, thank you

Cyric

 

[wyShack]

Most of the dongles tune a wide range of frequencies starting at about 25 MHZ and going up over 1 GHz. you can buy what is referred to as an 'up converter' to get the lower frequencies (like the HF marine frequencies). The converter 'moves' the lower frequencies up by 100 or 125 MHz so the dongles can receive them. On HF the antenna is key. Also the dongle does not have the 'front end' of a dedicated HF receiver so don't expect similar results. That said they will perform as well or better than a portable SW radio. Most of the software packages have no problem with SSB.

As a backup it would be better than nothing, I would keep the HF rig on the boat though.

Hope this answers your question

 

[Cyric30]

wyShack
Thank you for your answer, so if im reading you right a regular dongle will not pick up SSB?
but if i have "up Converter" it will?
could you point me to what some examples of what an up converter is? as i am really new to this?
but i find all of this very interesting to research into.

Most of the dongles tune a wide range of frequencies starting at about 25 MHZ and going up over 1 GHz. you can buy what is referred to as an 'up converter' to get the lower frequencies (like the HF marine frequencies). The converter 'moves' the lower frequencies up by 100 or 125 MHz so the dongles can receive them. On HF the antenna is key. Also the dongle does not have the 'front end' of a dedicated HF receiver so don't expect similar results. That said they will perform as well or better than a portable SW radio. Most of the software packages have no problem with SSB.

As a backup it would be better than nothing, I would keep the HF rig on the boat though.

Hope this answers your question

 

[br0adband]

As noted above, RTL-based hardware aka "cheap USB TV tuners" are cheap in price and they work just fine as expected. A radio signal is pretty much a radio signal, it's the modulation that differentiates them so as long as you have a frequency to tune into an RTL-based device (with the proper drivers so it can talk to your computer, of course) will make use of the tuner chip to pull in those radio signals. Also as noted the "cheap USB TV tuners" traditionally have a low frequency tuning limit of 24 or 25 MHz which is well above what's considered to be the area used primarily for AM broadcasts from the long wave very low end stuff through the broadcast AM band into the shortwave bands but using an upconverter of some kind can make that kind of tuning possible.

SSB is just another type of modulation and all the most current SDR software like SDR#, HDSDR, CubeSDR, SDR-Radio aka SDR-Console, and pretty much any other will offer multiple modes of operation for AM (synchronous, LSB, USB, DSB, CW, etc) are almost always available.

Believe it or not one of the more well known tips pages is provided by a sea-faring individual and I would highly recommend you checking his site out for more info that could prove useful in your situation especially all his tips for reducing RFI and noise when using SDR hardware. I've found it useful over the past 2 years or so that I've been more heavily involved in SDR overall so it's a resource worth looking into:

Software Defined Radio for Mariners

It could be exactly what you're looking for.

 

[Cyric30]

Br0adband
thank you very much for the information, and especily for the Link to SDF for Mariners Web sit i had not found that site yet and it was very usful for wat im trying to do with SDR

As noted above, RTL-based hardware aka "cheap USB TV tuners" are cheap in price and they work just fine as expected. A radio signal is pretty much a radio signal, it's the modulation that differentiates them so as long as you have a frequency to tune into an RTL-based device (with the proper drivers so it can talk to your computer, of course) will make use of the tuner chip to pull in those radio signals. Also as noted the "cheap USB TV tuners" traditionally have a low frequency tuning limit of 24 or 25 MHz which is well above what's considered to be the area used primarily for AM broadcasts from the long wave very low end stuff through the broadcast AM band into the shortwave bands but using an upconverter of some kind can make that kind of tuning possible.

SSB is just another type of modulation and all the most current SDR software like SDR#, HDSDR, CubeSDR, SDR-Radio aka SDR-Console, and pretty much any other will offer multiple modes of operation for AM (synchronous, LSB, USB, DSB, CW, etc) are almost always available.

Believe it or not one of the more well known tips pages is provided by a sea-faring individual and I would highly recommend you checking his site out for more info that could prove useful in your situation especially all his tips for reducing RFI and noise when using SDR hardware. I've found it useful over the past 2 years or so that I've been more heavily involved in SDR overall so it's a resource worth looking into:

Software Defined Radio for Mariners

It could be exactly what you're looking for.