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  • Author Author: afernandez
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How I Built a Raspberry Pi 3 SDR Radio Ground Station with OpenWebRX

afernandez
How I Built a Raspberry Pi 3 SDR Radio Ground Station with OpenWebRX

Hi, community!

I’m writing this post because I’d like to share my radio ground station project, built using an old Raspberry Pi 3 that I found in a box at home.

First, I’d like to give you some context. A few months ago, I started learning about a new hobby: radio! I don’t have my Spanish amateur radio licence yet, so I’m not authorised to transmit, although I’m currently working towards getting it. In the meantime, I wanted to build a ground station that would allow me to explore and listen to different radio frequencies.

One of the most important parts of the project is the antenna. Since I don’t have much available space, I decided to buy a Diamond X50. It is a compact, dual-band VHF/UHF antenna that is approximately 1.7 metres long. I installed it on a standard TV antenna mast.

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Lightning and surge protection are also very important, so I connected the antenna mast to a grounding point and installed a Diamond SP1000PW coaxial surge protector.

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In the future, I would also like to transmit using this antenna. For that reason, I added a coaxial switch that allows me to select either the SDR receiver or the TX/RX radio.

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I had to modify the coaxial switch by adding some internal insulation. By default, the inactive port was shorted to ground, which could potentially damage the transmitter if I accidentally tried to transmit while the SDR position was selected.

Once the installation was complete, I used my NanoVNA to measure the antenna system, check its resonant frequencies and analyse the SWR across the supported bands. These were the results.

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For SDR reception, I chose a Nooelec NESDR Smart v5. I also added a Nooelec Flamingo FM filter to reduce interference from powerful commercial FM broadcast stations.

Finally, I installed the required SDR drivers on the Raspberry Pi 3 and set up OpenWebRX, allowing me to access the receiver remotely through a web browser and listen to different frequencies.

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There are still many things I would like to improve, but I’m very happy with the results so far. I hope you find the project interesting, and I’d love to hear your suggestions and feedback!