dabradio 
dabradio is a Software for Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi for listening to terrestrial Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB and DAB+). It is the smaller brother of Qt-DAB, the successor of both DAB-rpi and sdr-j-DAB, two former programs by the same author.
Table of Contents
Features
- DAB (mp2) and DAB+ (HE-AAC v1, HE-AAC v2 and LC-AAC) decoding
- MOT SlideShow (SLS)
- Dynamic Label (DLS)
- Both DAB bands supported:
- VHF Band III
- L-Band (only used in Czech Republic and Vatican)
- Scanning function (scanning over all channels in a given band and collecting all services)
- Detailed information for selected service (SNR, bitrate, frequency, ensemble name, ensemble ID, subchannel ID, used CUs, protection level, CPU usage, program type, language, 4 quality bars)
- Supports various inputs from
- SDRplay (both RSP I and RSP II),
- Airspy, including Airspy mini,
- SDR DAB sticks (RTL2838U or similar), and
- prerecorded dump (*.sdr, and *.iq)
Not implemented:
- DMB (Audio and Video)
- TPEG;
- EPG;
- Journaline;
- Other bands than used for terrestrial broadcasting in Europe (like DAB over cable)
- HackRF
Introduction
dabradio is the little brother of Qt-DAB. The latter is kind of a research vehicle, with lost of options, used by only a few. The need arose to have a smaller brother, just for listening to DAB services.
dabradio and Qt-DAB share a lot of functionality, obviously, nevertheless to avoid even more "ifdef"s in the code, it was decided to maintain a GitHub repository for both of them.
The Qt-free version, the "command line only" version, is named dab-cmdline, and is built around a library that does the DAB decoding. It has its own repository on Github.
Next to these C++ based versions, a version in Java is being developed, it has its own repository on Github.
dabradio dynamically selects the input device. If an input device (one of SDRplay, AIRspy or RTLSDR stick) is attached, the software will find and use that device (if more than one device is connected, the software will select one of them). If no external device is selected, the software will present a menu to select a file for file input.
For further information please visit http://www.sdr-j.tk
Some settings are preserved between program invocations, they are stored in a file .dabradio.ini, to be found in the home directory. See Comment on some settings for more details.
Windows
Windows releases can be found at https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/dabradio/releases . Please copy them into the same directory you've unzipped http://www.sdr-j.tk/windows-bin.zip as it uses the same libraries.
If you want to compile it by yourself, please install Qt through its online installer, see https://www.qt.io/
Ubuntu Linux
If you are not familar with compiling then please continue reading by jumping to chapter appImage which is much easier for Linux beginners.
Ubuntu 16.04 (and on) have good support for Qt5 and qwt (compiled for Qt5). For generating an executable under Ubuntu (16.04 or newer), you can put the following commands into a script. (For Ubuntu 14.04 look into the package manager for Qt4 packages)
-
Fetch the required components
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install qt5-qmake build-essential g++ sudo apt-get install libsndfile1-dev qt5-default libfftw3-dev portaudio19-dev sudo apt-get install libfaad-dev zlib1g-dev rtl-sdr libusb-1.0-0-dev mesa-common-dev sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev libqt5opengl5-dev libsamplerate0-dev libqwt-qt5-dev sudo apt-get install qtbase5-dev -
Fetch the required libraries
a) Assuming you want to use a dabstick (also known as rtlsdr) as device, fetch a version of the library for the dabstick
wget http://sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/hware/rtlsdr/rtl-sdr-linrad4.tbz
tar xvfj rtl-sdr-linrad4.tbz
cd rtl-sdr-linrad4
sudo autoconf
sudo autoreconf -i
./configure --enable-driver-detach
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
cd
b) Assuming you want to use an Airspy as device, fetch a version of the library for the Airspy
sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev pkg-config
wget https://github.com/airspy/host/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd airspyone_host-master
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
Clean CMake temporary files/dirs:
cd host-master/build
rm -rf *
- Get a copy of the dabradio sources
git clone https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/dabradio.git
cd dabradio
-
Edit the
dabradio.profile for configuring the supported devices and other options. Comment the respective lines out if you don't own an Airspy (mini) or an SDRplay. -
If DAB spectrum and the constellation diagram should be displayed, check the installation path to qwt. If you were downloading it from http://qwt.sourceforge.net/qwtinstall.html please mention the correct path in
dabradio.profile (for other installation change it accordingly):
INCLUDEPATH += /usr/local/include /usr/local/qwt-6.1.3
- Build and make
qmake dabradio.pro
make
You could also use QtCreator, load the dabradio.pro file and build the executable.
Remark: The executable file can be found in the sub-directory linux-bin. A make install command is not implemented.
Configuring using the dabradio.pro file
Options in the configuration are:
a) select or unselect devices
Adding or removing from the configuration is in all cases by commenting or uncommenting a line in the configuration file.
Comment the lines out by prefixing the line with a # in the qt-dab.pro file (section "unix") for the device(s) you want to exclude in the configuration. In the example below, rtl_tcp (i.e. the connection to the rtlsdr server) won't be used.
CONFIG += dabstick
CONFIG += sdrplay
#CONFIG += rtl_tcp
CONFIG += airspy
Remark: Input from pre-recorded files (8 bit unsigned *.raw and *.iq' as well as 16-bit "wav" *.sdr` files) is configured by default.
Audio samples are - by default - sent to an audio device using the portaudio library.
Configuring using CMake
The CMakeLists.txt file has all devices and the spectrum switched off as default. You can select a device (or more devices) without altering the CMakeLists.txt file, but by passing on definitions to the command line.
An example:
cmake .. -DSDRPLAY=ON -DRTLTCP=ON -DSPECTRUM=ON
will generate a makefile with support for a) the SDRplay device, b) for the remote dabstick (using the rtl_tcp connection) and c) for the spectrum in the configuration.
Other devices that can be selected (beside dabstick and rtl_tcp) are sdrplay and airspy. Use -DRTLSDR=ON, or -DAIRSPY=ON after the cmake command if you want to configure them.
The default location for installation depends on your system, mostly /usr/local/bin or something like that. Set your own location by adding
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=your installation prefix
For other options, see the CMakeLists.txt file.
Important: Note that CMakeLists.txt file expects the appropriate Qt version (and - if configured - the qwt library) to be installed.
SDRplay
The current set of sources provides support for the RSP-I and the RSP-II and the new RSP-1a, it is assumed that at least library version 2.09 is installed.
Qt
The software uses the Qt library and - for the spectrum and the constellation diagram - the qwt library.
The CMakeLists.txt assumes Qt5, if you want to use Qt4, and you want to have the spectrum in the configuration, be aware of the binding of the qwt library (i.e. Qt4 and a qwt that uses Qt5 does not work well).
Raspberry PI
The dabradio software runs pretty well on the author's RPI-2. The average load on the 4 cores is somewhere between 50 and 60 percent.
One remark: getting "sound" is not always easy. Be certain that you have installed the alsa-utils, and that you are - as non-root user - able to see devices with aplay -L
In arch, it was essential to add the username to the group "audio".
The most recent distribution of Raspbian Stretch (i.e. august 2017) supports both Qt5 and a qwt compiled against Qt5.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Since I was studying the (potential) difference in behaviour between a version with and a version without concurrency in the front end, there is a setting in the ".pro" file for selecting this. Use for the dabradio the concurrency option.
For the ".pro" file uncomment
#DEFINES += __THREADED_DECODING.
For the CMakeLists.txt file, uncomment
#add_definitions (-D__THREADED_DECODING) #uncomment for the RPI
appImage for x64 Linux systems
https://github.com/JvanKatwijk/dabradio/releases contains a generated appImage which is created on Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty), and uses Qt4 (so it basically should run on any x-64 based linux system that isn't too old.). It assumes that you have installed a device, either a dabstick (i.e. rtlsdr), an Airspy or a SDRplay. All further dependencies are included. There is only one file which you have to make executable in order to run.
Note that on start up the appImage will try to set the udev settings for the airspy and dabstick right. Libraries for the dabstick (i.e. rtlsdr) and airspy are part of the appImage. Note that while the SDRplay is selectable, the library for the device should be installed from the supplier, i.e. "www.sdrplay.com".
All further dependencies are included
For more information see http://appimage.org/
Comment on some settings
Some values of settings are maintained between program invocations. This is done in the (hidden) file .dabradio.ini in the user's home directory.
Some settings are not influenced by buttons or sliders of the GUI, they will only change by editing the .ini file.
Typical examples are
saveSlides=1
when set to 0 the slides that are attached to audio programs will not be saved. If set to 1 the slides will be saved in a directory /tmp/qt-pictures (Linux) or in %tmp%\qt-pictures (Windows).
picturesPath
defines the directory where the slides (MOT slideshow) should be stored. Default is the home directory.
showSlides=1
when set to 0 the slides will not be shown.
has-presetName=1
when set the name of the selected service - that is selected when closing down the program - is kept and at the next invocation of the program, an attempt is made to start that particular service. The name of the service is kept as presetname=xxxx
The background colors of the spectrum can be changed by setting
displaycolor=blue
gridcolor=red
The Qt-DAB program now searches - if available - for TII (transmitter identification information) data in the FIC. If TII data is available, the small label at the bottom of the Technical Details widget will color green, and the main ID if the transmitters is shown. Also the list of geographical positions of the transmitters of the FSN is printed on the terminal. If the identification of the transmitter received can be decoded, it will be shown at the bottom line of the Technical Data Widget.
The periodicity of the search for the data defining the position of the transmitter received can be set by adding a line to the .qt-dab.ini file
tii_delay=xxx
where xxx is the number of seconds. Default of the delay is 20 seconds.
A note on intermittent sound
In some cases, in some periods of listening, the sound is (or at least seems) interrupted. There are two different causes for this
First of all the incoming signal is weak and audio packages do not pass the many controls that are executed. This shows in the widget "technical data", not all the colored bars at the bottom are 100 percent green. An audio package represents 24 milliseconds of audio, loss of a few packages leads to an interruption of the sound.
A second reason has to do with system parameters. Too small a buffersize in the audio driver causes too high a frequency of calls to a callback function. In Linux this shows by an underrun reported by the alsa sound system. The buffer size can be set (in multiples of 256 audio samples) by the value of "latency" in the ".ini" file. The default value is 1.
On my RPI 2 - with Stretch - latency=2 works best.
Copyright
Copyright (C) 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
Jan van Katwijk (J.vanKatwijk@gmail.com)
Lazy Chair Computing
The Qt-DAB software is made available under the GPL-2.0.
The SDR-J software, of which the Qt-DAB software is a part,
is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.