Raspberry Pi with GQRX as a radio astronomy receiver

[Nebojsa Kovacevic]

Dear all,

I am new to this group, but since Raspberry Pi using GQRX is starting to be very popular these days, it would be smart to share experiences and problems, helping other people to get the working system.

I have been using RTLSDR for quite some time on my netbook (Acer Aspire One D270 with Atom processor), and did not have any problem with it. Being a radio amateur, this was enormous step further. Also, being interested in amateur radio astronomy, I realized that this was an amazing receiver for being used as a radio astronomy receiver, along with the special RF front end of course.

Some time ago I started considering using Raspbberry Pi as a PC, especially for a remote recordings of the outher space signals.
Naturaly, I came accross the GQRX used on Raspbian and Raspberry Pi and that really caught my attention.

In short, I used Rpi2, since I am waiting for the Pi3 to arrive. RTLSDR dongle  It took me two days to finish everything, because I have had problem with (new) micro SD card (Verbatim, class 10 16GB). Why it died, I do not know. Probably the quality itself, or I was just unlucky and got stucked with a wrong picked card from the store.
After that, I used (and still using), SanDisc class 10 8GB card and that is really working fast and is reliable.

I can not share any troubleshooting with installation of the Raspbian, or GQRX on RPi2, since it was all straightforward, using informations from gqrx.dk and in short time I was abble to get it running and was surprised how well it is working. Processor arround 40%, no overheating (I placed processor aluminium cooler without fan, made by myself), 2,4msps (even it is being claimed that it can work reliable up to 1,8msps), fresh version of Raspbian installed few days ago, and fresh GQRX installation. I really had no problems at all during the installation or utilization of the software so far.
The thing that is helping alot is probably the fact that I installed everything fresh and will be using this Pi only for this purpose.

As for the radio astronomy receiver: I have already made some tests in the past few days and I can say that this little machine is working much better than few PC computers I have tested. The most important thing - less unwanted noise. If someone would be interested, I can post more on using this receiver as a radio astronomy RX in the future, since I still have to get hydrogen line signal on 1420MHz using this setup, and will try it on this band when the time permits.

My own conclusion: using GQRX on RPi2/3 is really worth wile and if everything goes well, is surprising how good it can work. It is recommanded for everyone who is still thinking of wether or not to make some effort in this direction.

[Fabrizio Carrai]

Hello Nebojsa,

2017-01-28 11:16 GMT+01:00 Nebojsa Kovacevic <eumed...@gmail.com>:

[...]

As for the radio astronomy receiver: I have already made some tests in the past few days and I can say that this little machine is working much better than few PC computers I have tested. The most important thing - less unwanted noise. If someone would be interested, I can post more on using this receiver as a radio astronomy RX in the future, since I still have to get hydrogen line signal on 1420MHz using this setup, and will try it on this band when the time permits.

Please, do it. I'm going to support a local high school that want to approach to the radioastronomy and they are buying an "off the shelf" system (I do not have the references with me, sorry), but the idea to use additionals SDR/GQRX workstations is very interesting (more students could work in parallel).

 

My own conclusion: using GQRX on RPi2/3 is really worth wile and if everything goes well, is surprising how good it can work. It is recommanded for everyone who is still thinking of wether or not to make some effort in this direction.

I totally agree

Thanks and 73

Fabrizio

[Alexandru Csete]

Thanks for the detailed feedback Nebojsa! It's really nice to hear
from people also when it just works and they don't have problems with
the software :-)

Alex
OZ9AEC

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