I just bought an RSPDuo from SDRPlay and I wanted to see if I could hook it up so I could access it from the network just like I do my Airspy HF+ on SpyServer.

So you dig around on Google and you find out that sure enough you can however it wasn’t as easy as it appeared. Believe me, it never is.  I am running my RSPDuo from an Ubuntu 18.04 laptop.  In SDRPlay’s defense they have a Raspberry Pi image on their downloads page and this stuff may already be configured. I won’t swear to that though. Laptops have a hell of a lot more OOMPH than a Raspberry Pi though and I just like messing around in Linux.

Lets get started:

First you need to install the driver on Linux.  Download it from here It will download a file named SDRplay_RSP_API-Linux-2.13.1.run (current version as of this writing).

Once downloaded you need to make it executable.  Make sure you are in the Downloads directory.

cd Downloads
sudo chmod +x SDRplay_RSP_API-Linux-2.13.1.run

Now making sure you are in the Downloads folder we need to install it.

cd
cd Downloads
./SDRplay_RSP_API-Linux-2.13.1.run

Now you need to scroll through the agreement and hit “y” to install.  So far so good.  Now we have to download and install RSP_TCP.

Do the following:

cd 
git clone https://github.com/SDRplay/RSPTCPServer.git
cd rsp_tcp
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

Now one is led to believe all you need to do to start the program is to issue the following command:
NOTE: Make sure your IP address is the address of the computer this program resides on. My IP address below is just an example.

rsp_tcp -a 192.168.1.100

NOT SO. I received the following error:

rsp_tcp: error while loading shared libraries: libmirsdrapi-rsp.so.2.13:

Wonderous!  You need to export the library path to /usr/local/lib to make this work.

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

The good news is…..THIS WORKS! You can now launch RSP_TCP
The bad news is……It won’t survive a reboot! So lets add it so it will last.

To be honest I’m not sure you need to do both of these things but I did ’em and it worked. The first command might be enough.

ldconfig /usr/local/lib

Then I did this:

sudo nano /etc/ld.so.conf

Add the following to the file then hit CTL +X, then Y to save, then Enter

/usr/local/lib

After a reboot you should be able to launch the program manually. To make it persistent install supervisor.

sudo apt-get install supervisor
sudo nano /etc/supervisor/supervisord.conf

Add this to the bottom of the file:
NOTE: Once again make sure your IP address is correct. Mine is just an example. Without the sleep command mine wouldn’t work.  Guess if it starts before the network or something it fails.

[program:rsp_tcp]
command=bash -c 'sleep 15 && rsp_tcp -a 192.168.1.100'
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stderr_logfile=/var/log/long.err.log
stdout_logfile=/var/log/long.out.log

Now you can reboot and it should start. To connect go to GQRX or SDR# and use:

rtl_tcp=192.168.1.100:1234

Here it is in action.

 

Lastly you can and should install the EXTIO plugin. Just download it from here

git clone https://github.com/SDRplay/ExtIO_RSP_TCP.git

It will make a directory called
ExtIO_RSP_TCP
Get the two files with .sln and .vcxproj extensions and copy them in your rsp_tsp directory.

Done deal.