Radio vs. RTL-SDR

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I live in Hurricane country and it is hurricane season.  Everyone tells you to have a radio in your storm preparation kit, but they don’t specify WHAT radio but sometimes they will say “Weather” radio.  A decent weather radio will set you back $30 or so.  But then that doesn’t get you the local news.  So an AM/FM/Weather radio that is decent will set you back even more.  There are cheaper ones than I just linked, but not cheaper by much.

During Hurricane Florence in New Bern, NC the local TV stations bugged out and the NOAA weather station was damaged and stopped transmitting.

Power was out and there was widespread flooding.  And an almost across the board loss of LOCAL communications.  At this point you are left with the Ham Radio folks.  Also most people probably aren’t aware the AM radio signals can be heard for HUNDREDS OF MILES at night.  So if your town loses all communications, the next one over probably didn’t.  Or that big city 200 miles away inland didn’t.

Below is the AM band at 1AM from my location in Eastern NC.  660 AM is WFAN in New York and it is coming in crystal clear.  It is routine to listen to Louisville, Clevland, New York, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, Canada, etc.  You can see how many signals there are of good strength.

AM Radio at 1 AM Eastern North Carolina

Anyway, even supposing you have a multi-band radio that doesn’t help you when most everything goes off the air.  Where are you going to get your information?
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Using an SDRPlay RSPdx Over The Network

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Using an SDR device over your local network is pretty handy.  If you are like me your antenna connection for your SDR is in one place.   If you want to play “radio” you have to do it in that one place formerly known as “The Ham Shack”.  No more.  The Ham Shack can be anywhere in the house now.

Using an SDR over the network is nothing new but the various methods have pros and cons.   Essentially I want to be able to roll through 0 KHz to 1800 MHz from anywhere in the house.   In my previous blog I used an Airspy HF+ Discovery to stream to a Mac computer.  That worked perfectly but the Airspy HF+ does HF (plus a little more).   It doesn’t go 0-1800.

But my SDRPlay devices (RSPdx, RSP1a, and RSPDuo) do.  SDRPlay has some network Server software called RSP_TCP and let’s just call a duck, a duck shall we?  It’s crap.   It has limitations and it seems to be an abandoned project.  Go to their Github page and nothing has been done to the code for a couple of years.

But the folks at SDRPlay came up with an awesome solution to remote control a couple of years ago (which is probably why they bailed on the RSP_TCP project).

It is called VirtualHere.  I’ll try to make the explanation of that it is as simple as possible.
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Listen to Airspy Spyserver on a Mac

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It’s been a hot minute since I played with my RTL-SDR’s.  I have an Airspy Discovery HF+ which is an amazing piece of hardware, however it plays best with Windows software, specifically SDRSharp (SDR#).

The trouble is I spend most of my life on a Mac computer.   On the same download page I linked above for SDRSharp is program called SpyServer.  You can set up your Airspy HF+ Discovery to serve up radio over your network.

The trouble with that is the best software client to do that is SDR# which is Windows only.  So in order to make it work on Mac here is what we will do.
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Driving Miss Acer

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This is about Windows drivers.

I bought a cheap laptop from Walmart, an Acer A514-54-501Z.  While going through the system and deleting all the crappy extra programs they put in these things I noticed that many of the system drivers had a date of 2021 or earlier.  Only 1 or 2 drivers even had a date of 2022 and for a fact I know one was causing the computer to Blue Screen (wifi driver) which certainly prompted an update from Acer.   However, if I go to the Acer Support page I’m given a driver to download for my MediaTek Wifi module however if you go to MediaTek OEM drivers it isn’t even close to the latest driver.

Here’s what happens.  Let’s say you make laptops and you make some real cheap for the Walmart and Target crowd.  You make a profit, but not a big one.  You are NOT going to keep a crack team of software engineers on staff to maintain this laptop in an up to date, pristine status.   You find a driver that works, is stable and it STICKS.  They don’t update them UNLESS THEY HAVE TO, and by have to I mean that they receive tons of complaints or crash data.

Or if their high end computer has the same component and gets updated, maybe they’ll push it down to the bottom tier.  Like it or not, that is just the way it is.

I ran a program called Driver Booster 9 and it found TWENTY FIVE drivers that needed upgrading, including that MediaTek Wifi driver I mentioned earlier.
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Windows 11 Networking Not All Computers Showing

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I was having an issue where only a 3 of my networked computers were showing in the Windows Network Neighborhood (or at least they used to call it Network Neighborhood).

All computers on the network were visible from all my Mac and Linux computers and running software such as LanScan showed everything proudly announcing itself on the network.  So the problem pretty clearly was with Windows 11.

This is a blog where I wish I specified a FIX to the problem but the truth is, I’m not sure what fixed the problem, but this blog may not be a total waste to anyone else with this problem. 

First of all, I’m not new to the geek stuff, but I am newly returned to Windows.  I bought an Acer Aspire 5 laptop specifically to run a program called Vectric VCarve Desktop for my CNC machine.  Also my CNC machine firmware can only be updated from a Windows computer. Also since I design my SVG files on a Mac and store them on a couple of servers  I HAVE TO HAVE NETWORK ACCESS WITH MY WINDOWS LAPTOP WHILE I’M IN MY WORKSHOP TRYING TO CNC SOMETHING.

Let’s dig in.
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Victorinox Swiss Army Knife 125th Anniversary 1897 Replica

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There are not tons of places that can say they have been in business over 100 years, much less 125 years.

Not sure why I’m sneaking this in a post about pocket knives but there is a Hot Dog joint in a nearby town to me (Bill’s Hot Dogs in Washington, NC) that has been open since 1928.  Okay, not quite 100 years but you’re still doing something right if you can sell the same hot dogs and super secret chili sauce for almost 100 years.

And so it goes with the Swiss Army knife.  They are doing something right.  It is so engrained in our culture that the very words “Swiss Army Knife” are synonymous with anything multi-purpose.  Actually the company stretches back until about 1884 but the Swiss Officer’s and Sports knife was patented in 1897.   To commemorate this anniversary a replica knife was released .

And here is what I like about it.  Not much has really changed with the pocket knife.   Oh sure, metallurgy has come a long way, and the tools are a bit more refined and specialized but essentially it remains nearly the same.   The can opener was an odd duck compared to the openers of today, but make no mistake, you can still open a can with it.

Let’s discuss the 1897 Replica a bit more in detail.
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Leatherman Style PS

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Style PS

I love pocket knives and multi-tools.  My favorites are Swiss Army knives and Leatherman Multi-Tools.   The best multi-tool on the planet pound for pound may be the Leatherman Wave +.  The Leatherman Surge is my second runner up but it is freaking HUGE.

Sometimes you need to go SMALL though. Something that won’t pull your pants down if it is in your pocket or give you one Popeye arm.  Enter the Leatherman Style PS.  It is definitely keychain sized but its claim to fame is that it is travel friendly.  Translation:  There is no knife blade on it.

The P stands for Pliers, and the S stands for Scissors.  But no knife blade.

 

While I’ve never travelled with this I’d be willing to bet the fine men and women of the TSA would still confiscate this, knife blade or not, because, it is what they do.  It LOOKS like a knife.
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Windows 11

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If you follow this blog at all you know that I am not a fan of Windows.  I came all the way up from Windows 2 (at work) to MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 on my first home computer, a 486SX that cost a couple thousand dollars.  There were some epic failures along the way.  Windows 98SE and Windows ME, and Windows Vista were three giant turds of epic proportions.  To make things worse they just kept making us PAY for new versions of craptastic Operating Systems.

At some point I became sick of paying for crap and started using Linux and then kind of turned into a Mac guy somewhere along the line.

But sadly for me many manufacturers of some cool toys simply don’t support Mac or Linux or if they do it is clear that the Windows programs are superior in terms of polish or workflow.

Case in point.  For CNC machines the best software in the world, Vectric VCarve or Vectric Aspire,  is Windows only.   Yep you can do CNC work in Linux and on Mac but Vectric is just head and shoulders above every other experience, in my opinion.

I’m also a Software Defined Radio geek and have a few SDR’s from SDRPlay.  Their software, SDRuno is currently Windows only.  They are working on a cross platform version but it’s been years coming.

So now that I have this new Acer Aspire 5 (A514-54-501Z) that I upgraded it is time to explore some of the items that run best in a Windows Environment.  Let’s make a short list:
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Lasers. Know What You Are Getting In To.

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I have written about this before but it seems there is an explosion of laser owners who spend big money on a gigantic CO2 laser machine and then are never able to produce anything with it.  The frustration level is generally pretty high and then after declaring the machine to be garbage they then want 95% of retail price to sell it.

It is both fun, and sad to watch.  After playing with lasers for a couple of years, here are my updated thoughts on the dilemma that plagues many new users.

There are some incredible artists out there with exceptional abilities to produce imaginative products.  Products that they assume will make them rich.  So they invest thousands in a CO2 laser.  Here are some of the things they quickly find out:

  • The lasers are made in China, with all the quality tech support you have come to expect from China.
  • A laser is a SYSTEM which consists of Power Supplies, Electronic Controllers, safety switches, fans, motors, water cooling systems, a HIGH POWERED laser with a precision alignment series of mirrors in which the beam must be aligned horizontally AND vertically.  Throw in a laser dot pointer, and a water chiller, and an air assist system, and you have a device that requires several vocational skills to maintain.  Oh, and they can be networked as well.  You might need some minor computing skills.
  • Machines like this WILL BREAK.  It is not “if”.  It is “when”.  CO2 laser tubes have a finite life span and will have to be replaced and re-aligned.  There is no getting around that.
  • If the machine is vital to your production and any down time will affect your BUSINESS AND CUSTOMERS you absolutely, positively MUST MAINTAIN SPARE PARTS and possess the ability, or know someone with the ability to repair the machine.  Or own a back up machine.

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Upgrading Acer A514-54-501Z

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Got this Acer Aspire 5 (A514-54-501Z) laptop at Walmart for $399 after doing a ton of research on budget laptops.  Possibly the best part about this laptop is that it is upgradeable.  The laptop comes with a Kingston 256GB NVME M.2 Solid State Drive.  Through some projects and upgrades I just happened to have a 1TB Samsung EVO 970 Plus drive laying around.  Might as well put it to good use.

If you are trying to keep the total upgrade cost lower than the cost of a more capable laptop then the sweet spot for a drive upgrade is probably a 500GB NVME which generally runs about $50.   Add 16GB of RAM for about $60 and your total cost is about $510.  Add 8GB of RAM instead and you can lop $30 off of that cost.  There is not really another budget laptop with these specs at these costs.

Obviously the drive needs to be cloned, and cloning it in place is most desirable.  The best way to clone the target drive is with a USB C enclosure. I used this one that I got on Amazon.

Plugable NVME M.2 Enclosure

The Acer Aspire laptop has a USB C port so connecting it was a breeze.  You simply slide the target drive in the enclosure, add some thermal pads (included) to the drive, and plug it in the computer.  It will be immediately recognized as your D: drive.

 

Another advantage of having the Plugable NVME enclosure is that now you will have a spare 256GB drive just laying around.  Slap it in the enclosure and you just got yourself a 256GB external hard drive.  I recommend using AOMEI Backupper to create an image file of the original drive just in case.  Back in the day you used to get a Windows CD with your computer purchase. Now if a drive craps out you have nothing.  To retrieve your original 25 digit Windows Product Key type the following at a CMD prompt:

wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey

The software I used is AOEMI BackUpper Professional.  While you can accomplish this with the free version of the software, the Pro version will convert your MBR drive to GPT and also automatically resize the unused portion of the partition.   Also there will be no issues with it being a bootable drive.  I didn’t time the clone process but it only took 2 or 3 minutes.

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