Software Defined Radio (SDR) has transformed the radio hobby. What once required racks of analog hardware can now be done with a small USB dongle, a laptop, and open-source software. But as the market has matured, the choices have multiplied — from sub-$30 dongles to $1,000+ research-grade platforms. This guide covers every major SDR available […]
This post documents an experimental, complete, journey of building an AFSK APRS packet transmitter and receiver using the ADALM PlutoSDR software-defined radio, first in MATLAB and then in Python. I tried to cover everything from generating AX.25 frames, AFSK modulation, hardware connection troubleshooting on macOS, and finally a full packet decoder. What is APRS? APRS […]
This post is a Raspberry Pi 5 edition of our AFSK APRS transmitter and decoder project using the ADALM PlutoSDR. We cover everything from scratch: setting up the operating system, installing all dependencies including libiio, SoapySDR and pyadi-iio, connecting the PlutoSDR over USB, and running the full Python transmitter and decoder pipeline. What is APRS? […]
I have a love-hate relationship with Adalm Pluto. I bought it from Mouser in 2020 when it was roughly 100 euros (now it is almost double that price !) and I never managed to do anything useful with it.
