WebSDR node based on a Raspberry PI

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This WebSDR setup covers a dual band receiver (80/40 meters bands) time-based switched. It uses a relay to switch between antennas who is managed by one GPiO pin on the Raspberry PI (using a driver transistor).

Very special thanks to Pieter PA3FWM, Mark G4FPH and Jarek SQ9NFI for the helpful hand on configuring the progfreq setting.

Requirements

Raspberry PI 3
Raspbian 9 installed and working
Internet access setup and working
RTL-SDR USB Dongle

Required setup and software

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install g++ make libsigc++-1.2-dev libgsm1-dev libpopt-dev tcl8.5-dev libgcrypt-dev libspeex-dev libasound2-dev alsa-utils libqt4-dev
sudo apt-get install libsigc++ cmake groff rtl-sdr

GPIO Setup

Copy the etc/rc.local file to your /etc/rc.local

sudo cp etc/rc.local /etc/rc.local

Check and match GPIO ports for relay control to switch antennas and a button to soft reset the Raspberry pi.

Software reset

There is a Python script that handles Raspberry PI reboots from a hardware switch without killing power.
Check the /etc/rc.local file and match the desired GPIO port for this task.
Copy lib/systemd/system/reset.service to /lib/systemd/system/reset.service

sudo cp opt/reset.py /opt/reset.py
sudo cp etc/systemd/system/reset.service to /etc/systemd/system/reset.service
chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/reset.service
systemctl enable reset.service
systemctl start reset.service

This is the software reset schematic. It has a 5v pull-up signal between a 10k resistor.

Antenna controller

This WebSDR setup uses one RTL-SDR dongle for two bands (40/80 meters), crontab takes control of which band is working. As wave length isn't the same on both two bands, I'm using a GPiO port to switch between them using a DPDT relay. GPIO3 is controlled by the check_band.sh cron script.

WebSDR

Ask Pieter to get a copy of WebSDR.
Copy the websdr-rpi binary and files to your home directory (/home/pi/)
Edit websdr-80m.cfg and websdr-40m.cfg to fulfill your configuration
Create Systemd units to manage websdr and rtl_tcp

sudo cp etc/systemd/system/websdr@.service /etc/systemd/system/websdr@.service
sudo cp etc/systemd/system/rtl_tcp@.service /etc/systemd/system/rtl_tcp@.service

Enable just the rtl_tcp one. Websdr is managed by crontab

sudo systemctl enable rtl_tcp@0.service

Cron

I built a crontab configuration to switch between 40m and 80m bands time-based. Just import the crontab lines into your crontab.

Manual control

You can always control band changes manual way. Disable cron lines to avoid automatic setup changes. Then you can use

sudo systemctl stop websdr@40.service
sudo systemctl start websdr@40.service

Where 40 is the band you want to receive. You can use and setup almost any band you want, as long as you had setup your websdr-{{band}}m.cfg

aowd / raspberry-websdr