Installation and initial setup
Installation
Prerequisites- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5
- Microsoft SQL Express LocalDB 2014
Setup
Prerequisites- You have at least one RF monitoring station networked and accessible by SSH client (to check connectivity you can use Putty for instance).
- You know IP address or FQDN of the monitoring station, username and password for establishing SSH connection. If your RPi station is not on your LAN but somewhere on the internet behind firewall, adsl modem etc. I presume you know how to setup port forwarding on the device you have, moreover setting up dynamic name service may be required also. I prefer ddclient ("sudo apt-get install ddclient" on Raspbian will do the job). In some cases even better solution is connecting by establishing VPN network.
Start MNM4SDR and select Function=>Configuration=>Measurement Stations
Add all stations you have so you can select from which of them you want to get result or listen to the audio stream of demodulated signal.
Here is explanation of the database Station table fields:
- Name - Obligatory and unique attribute
- Fqdn (You can type here IP address If it is more convenient for you) - Obligatory but only pair Fqdn, Port should be unique, because you can have more than one RPi monitoring stations NAT-ed behind a Firewall.
- Port - Obligatory and related to listening port for the SSH server running on the RPi Monitoring station.
- Media FW port -
In this version MUST be 1234. Port used here is where your Audio stream of demodulated signal can be found when audio streaming had started. - Default RF gain - This is default RF gain for the DVB-T dongle. Safe bet is "Automatic" but a little experimenting required to chose the best value.
- PPM - (Parts Per Million) This is default PPM freq. correction for the DVB-T dongle. Correct value could be acquired by using kalibrate-rtl utility. There is example how to do it here: https://mnm4sdr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Using%20RPi%20Administration%20function
- User - Obligatory, connection to the RPi station couldn't be established without it.
- Password - Obligatory, connection to the RPi station couldn't be established without it.
- Longitude, Latitude,
Typedon't have any useful function for now except for the reference.
Add RF Bands (optional)
This step is optional, you can use "Single freq." check box all the time, but predefined frequency bands are just like shortcuts for speeding up and standardizing process of RF scanning. Remember, this is low-cost hardware and you can insert frequency band of any wide but keep it reasonably narrow.
Function=>Configuration=>Scan bands
Here are explanation of fields:
- Name - Obligatory and something unique and familiar.
- FreqStart - Obligatory, starting frequency of band in Hz
- FreqStop - Obligatory, ending frequency of bad in Hz
- Designation - Optional, just for the reference
As I've said, It is not required to have scan bands defined. In many cases it is easier and more meaningful to select central frequency and frequency span but first click on the "Single frequency" check box.
Connectivity testing and basic system commands
You can now test connectivity and health of your remote RPi monitoring station. Select Function=>Administration and Maintenance window shows up.Just select any of yours previously inserted monitoring station from the drop-down list of "Stations", select commands from the list of "Commands" but be careful with "System restart", click on the "Execute" button and wait for the response. You can see on the attached figure result of executing "Check RTLSDR dongle" command on my development system, everything seems to be just fine with it.
In this moment You can just select "Station" on the main panel of the MNM4SDR and hit the button "Execute". It takes a time to SSH connection be established and measured values start arriving.
Program controls
Under the "Spect. Analyzer" of the program all controls are actually resemblance of the command line options for the rtl_power program from the rtl-sdr package. For deeper understanding please visit this great page http://kmkeen.com/rtl-power/
Tips and tricks (sort of)
Chart panel
- Click on the Spectrum line to see frequency and level of the clicked point
- Click on the waterfall chart to see frequency, level and line serie
- Ctrl+Click on the spectrum line or waterfall to tune central frequency and Audio panel frequency at the frequency of point You've clicked.
Administration window
- Double click at the label "Command" and new text box is goint to show up on the left. You can type and execute any Linux command from here. Every command typed in this box has priority over any command from Drop-down list.
etc. TO BE CONTINUED ...
