I have a failure at a remote site. Hostile environment for testing, so I brought the system home but have no RF from planes due location. I’m using Flightaware Pro-stick plus V1.0 and PiAware (SD Card) 10.0.1. I have some other SDR RXes as well and will replace the Pro stick if it is defective with one of them.
So I want to see if the SDR is receiving using a signal generator. Is there a pin I can hook to a scope? Or any way I can do a command line update of RSSI even if no packets being decoded? Being a ham I would normally hook up my RF generator and scope a level somewhere!
Whenever I search for RSSI on the SDR, even using AI(!) I just get results saying it can be output along with decoded packets, but I have no way of getting packets, just RF!
Any help really appreciated, other wise I’ll be back to balancing all my test gear at the top of a ladder!
With a ‘scope and a RF signal generator, you could:
a) run rtl_sdr from the command line to stream samples and, more importantly, initialize the tuner (you can pass /dev/null as the output filename to discard the captured samples)
b) feed in a (low level!! maybe -50dBm) RF signal at your tuned frequency with a signal generator
c) probe the differential signal on pins 12/13 of the R860T to see if you have a good IF signal at around ~3.5MHz (this should be a frequency-downshifted copy of your RF input). I’m not sure how accessible those pins are. They’re the two pins on the opposite corner from the pin-1 marker.
Alternatively, you could do just (b) and run e.g. CubicSDR on the Pi to look at the digitized signal.
which option is easier depends a lot on what equipment you have, and whether you’re more comfortable with hardware or software
