Jon Hudson, Marketing Director of SDRplay Ltd., has been in touch to report that SDRplay – the makers of the RSP family of SDR receivers – have released some Raspberry Pi installer scripts which allow you to add SDRplay-specific software to your existing Raspberry Pi configuration – and the SDRplay related software will then appear alongside your other applications. For the last couple of years, stand-alone SD card images have been available for SDRplay users. These are downloadable images which allow you to run SDR software on an RSP connected to a Raspberry Pi and they have proved very popular. These are the images you can get by going to this URL:

https://www.sdrplay.com/raspberry-pi-images

There are versions for all the RSP models as well as a headless server version for remote operation. These SD Card images, suitable for RPi 3 and 4, were updated in December 2020 to ensure compatibility with the newer RPi 4B+, RPi 4B+ 8GB and the RPi-400 models). However, using one of these ready-made SD Card images means fiddling with the SD card to swap it, whenever you want to switch to or from other software on the same Raspberry Pi. Alternatively, to add those new programmes to your existing Raspberry Pi set-up, you would need to run a long list of commands which would add these programmes. You would then need to tweak the settings for these programmes - to make them compatible with your SDR receiver hardware.

All this can be a time consuming and cumbersome process which – unless you are an experienced programmer –

can prove to be daunting. The installer script is an executable file that handles all this for you  (it will install the software packages and tweak the settings so that everything is ready to run). The new SDRplay installer scripts are available from the first website, below (select your RSP model and choose ARM Raspberry Pi OS – then choose “API” to download them).

There is also a YouTube video guide (click on the second web link below), in which SDRplay shows you how to download, extract and execute installer scripts for the SDRplay API, CubicSDR and RSP_TCP Server. The image shows an SDRplay RSP1A, Raspberry Pi4 and CubicSDR tuned to the 40m amateur band.

The RSP family of SDR receivers range in price from around £100 to £240 and are available directly from SDRplay Ltd., or Martin Lynch &Sons, Moonraker, Nevada, Radioworld, SDR-Kits and Waters & Stanton.

https://www.sdrplay.com/downloads

https://youtu.be/-KHMOVmxLEU

www.SDRplay.com   

[email protected]

Jon Hudson - SDRplay Ltd.

21 Lenten Street, Alton, Hampshire GU34 1HG

+44 7836 591 544 (mobile)

+44 1223 911 044 (office)