How do I debug rtl_433 ?

[Neil Cherry]

This did work at one time but my server crashed so I had to reinstall. I fear I've forgotten something. Currentiy the RTL283UHIDIR doesn't receive anything. I've tried it with a working X10 remote and I have Lacrosse sensors. So if it was working I would have expected something. I've git cloned the latest code, compiled and installed it (no errors).  I ran the rmmod command but those modules are not loaded. I'm not sure how to proceed.

Here's my dmesg

[Tue Mar 27 13:44:08 2018] usb 4-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci

[Tue Mar 27 13:44:08 2018] usb 4-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=2838

[Tue Mar 27 13:44:08 2018] usb 4-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0

[Tue Mar 27 13:44:08 2018] usb 4-1.2: Product: RTL2838UHIDIR

[Tue Mar 27 13:44:08 2018] usb 4-1.2: Manufacturer: Realtek

Here's the command:

$ sudo rtl_433 -A

... (trimmed)

trying device  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 

Found Elonics E4000 tuner

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM

Exact sample rate is: 250000.000414 Hz

Sample rate set to 250000.

Bit detection level set to 0 (Auto).

Tuner gain set to Auto.

Reading samples in async mode...

Tuned to 433920000 Hz.

And there it remains.

Any pointers?

Thanks

[Christian Zuckschwerdt]

Try -a or -A or -a -t and see if you get any signals at all. Otherwise try Gqrx or CubicSDR and "see" if there are signals ;)

[Robert Terzi]

What frequency is your X10 remote on?   What country are you in?

IIRC the X10 stuff itself is on 310 Mhz or 315 Mhz.   The LaCrosse stuff will be around 433.92 Mhz in the US and 868 Mhz in Europe.

Other things to do/try:

As Christian suggested, use an SDR console app with a waterfall like GQRX, SDR#, etc. to verify reception with your stick and antenna.

Looks like you've got an older E4000 tuner.  I don't know that any of those were made with better TCXO, so you might want to warm it up, and then figure it out how big the PPM error is and in which direction.    When you are using most SDR software you'll be seeing 2 mhz of bandwidth because you'll be sampling around 2 msps.  However, rtl_433 is using only 250 Ksps, so you'll see only about 100 khz usable on either side of the DC spike.

Hope this helps,
--Rob

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "rtl_433" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rtl_433+u...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to rtl...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rtl_433.
To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rtl_433/60e887b5-237d-49b5-8092-ed743d081827%40googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Robert Terzi]

Also, last I looked the X10 decoder isn't enabled by default.  So once you are getting signals, you'll need use -G or -R nn for all the decoders you wish to enable.

[Neil Cherry]

Okay, sorry it took so long to revisit this. I am stumped, I've tried 3 dongles and none work (???) but I also found that other programs also fail to find these devices. So I'm at a loss what is the cause of my problem. At one time this did work and I was able to see the JSON output from rtl_433. For the moment I need to put this on the back burner but I will revisit this. Perhaps with a Raspberry Pi. I had good luck with that in the past also.

[Louis Croisez]

i have a Chacon device emitting on 434.5 MHz. At the beginning i though it just didn't work but after check with sdrsharp i saw thath i had to specify the frequency different than default 433.92