Mnm4Sdr is also at Bitbucket

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NEWS

 

Project Description

GUI for remote Raspberry-Pi (Raspbian with rtl-sdr installed) and DVB-T dongle over SSH connection with Low bandwidth and Stability as goals.

 If you have previous version and want to retain the Database, please backup MNCdata.mdf and MNCdata_log.ldf. After finished installation you can replace these two files by previous backup.

Short but excellent review of the Project could be find at RTL-SDR blog http://www.rtl-sdr.com/new-raspberry-pi-remote-rtl-sdr-gui-software-mnm4sdr/.

Scanning of GSM900 European downlink band

Figure 1. Scanning GSM-900 European Downlink band.

You can build your own RF monitoring network based on Raspberry Pi or share your RPi monitoring stations with your friends or just use it as a feed for an internet audio stream.
FEATURES:


The system consists of the Management station(s) and Monitoring station(s) communicating in real-time over the network. Low-cost (and simple) RF monitoring system based on Management software MNM4SDR and networked Raspberry-Pi (Raspbian, RTL-SDR, SSH) stations equiped with DVB-T dongles (List of supported dongles is here http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr)

 

Architecture - Components of system

Management station
The name MNM4SDR belongs to management program installed on the Management station (It is PC with Windows operating system on it) and used to scan RF bands or specific frequency, log results to file and execute remote commands in order to demodulated signal could be streamed back from Monitoring station.
MNM4SDR stands for Monitoring Network Manager for RTL-SDR

Project simplified

Monitoring station
System is developed and tested with Raspbian on the Raspberry-Pi B+, but You can use whatever flavor of linux you want. Here is the very simple script I've used to speed up installation of all necessary components on clean Raspbian. I've tested it (but not thoroughly) and it works on fresh new Raspbian 2015-05-05. The script must be run with root privileges but make it executable at first (chmod +x <file>)

#!/bin/bash
echo "UPDATING SYSTEM AND INSTALLING PACKAGES..."
apt-get update
apt-get install vlc
apt-get install git cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev build-essential
apt-get install libtool autoconf automake libfftw3-dev
echo "BUILDING RTL-SDR..."
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git
cd rtl-sdr/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON
make
make install
ldconfig
printf '%s\n%s\n%s\n'  'blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu' 'blacklist rtl2830' 'blacklist rtl2832' >> /etc/modprobe.d/rtl283x-blacklist.conf
depmod -a
cd ../../ echo "BUILDING KALIBRATE-RTL..." git clone https://github.com/steve-m/kalibrate-rtl cd kalibrate-rtl/ ./bootstrap ./configure make make install ldconfig echo "FINISHED, REBOOT NOW!!!"


The simplest monitoring station is shown here.

 

For deeper understanding please refer to:

  1. http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
  2. http://kmkeen.com/rtl-power/
  3. http://kmkeen.com/rtl-demod-guide/
  4. https://www.videolan.org/doc/videolan-howto/en/ch09.html