Skip to main content

A Python wrapper for librtlsdr (a driver for Realtek RTL2832U based SDR's)

Project description

Build Status

Description

pyrtlsdr is a simple Python interface to devices supported by the RTL-SDR project, which turns certain USB DVB-T dongles employing the Realtek RTL2832U chipset into low-cost, general purpose software-defined radio receivers. It wraps many of the functions in the librtlsdr library (including asynchronous read support), and also provides a more Pythonic API.

Usage

pyrtlsdr can be installed by downloading the source files and running python setup.py install, or using pip and pip install pyrtlsdr.

All functions in librtlsdr are accessible via librtlsdr.py and a Pythonic interface is available in rtlsdr.py (recommended). Some documentation can be found in docstrings in the latter file.

Examples

Simple way to read and print some samples:

from rtlsdr import RtlSdr

sdr = RtlSdr()

# configure device
sdr.sample_rate = 2.048e6  # Hz
sdr.center_freq = 70e6     # Hz
sdr.freq_correction = 60   # PPM
sdr.gain = 'auto'

print(sdr.read_samples(512))

Plotting the PSD with matplotlib:

from pylab import *
from rtlsdr import *

sdr = RtlSdr()

# configure device
sdr.sample_rate = 2.4e6
sdr.center_freq = 95e6
sdr.gain = 4

samples = sdr.read_samples(256*1024)

# use matplotlib to estimate and plot the PSD
psd(samples, NFFT=1024, Fs=sdr.sample_rate/1e6, Fc=sdr.center_freq/1e6)
xlabel('Frequency (MHz)')
ylabel('Relative power (dB)')

show()

Resulting plot here.

See the files ‘demo_waterfall.py’ and ‘test.py’ for more examples.

Experimental features

Two new submodules are available for testing: rtlsdraio, which adds native Python 3 asynchronous support (asyncio module), and rtlsdrtcp which adds a TCP server/client for accessing a device over the network. See the respective modules in the rtlsdr folder for more details and feel free to test and report any bugs!

rtlsdraio

Note that the rtlsdraio module is automatically imported and adds stream() and stop() methods to the normal RtlSdr class. It also requires the new async/await syntax introduced in Python 3.5+.

The syntax is basically:

async def streaming():
 sdr = RtlSdr()

 async for samples in sdr.stream():
  # do something with samples
  # ...

  # to stop streaming:
  sdr.stop()

 # done
 sdr.close()

asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(streaming())

Dependencies

  • Windows/Linux/OSX

  • Python 2.7.x/3.3+

  • librtlsdr (builds dated after 5/5/12)

  • Optional: NumPy (wraps samples in a more convenient form)

matplotlib is also useful for plotting data. The librtlsdr binaries (rtlsdr.dll in Windows and librtlsdr.so in Linux) should be in the pyrtlsdr directory, or a system path. Note that these binaries may have additional dependencies.

Todo

There are a few remaining functions in librtlsdr that haven’t been wrapped yet. It’s a simple process if there’s an additional function you need to add support for, and please send a pull request if you’d like to share your changes.

Troubleshooting

  • Some operating systems (Linux, OS X) seem to result in libusb buffer issues when performing small reads. Try reading 1024 (or higher powers of two) samples at a time if you have problems.

  • If you’re having librtlsdr import errors:

  • Windows: Make sure all the librtlsdr DLL files (rtlsdr.dll and libusb-1.0.dll) are in your system path, or the same folder as this README file. Also make sure you have all of their dependencies (e.g. the Visual Studio runtime files). If rtl_sdr.exe works, then you should be okay. Also note that you can’t mix the 64 bit version of Python with 32 bit builds of librtlsdr, and vice versa.

  • Linux: Make sure your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable contains the directory where the librtlsdr.so.0 library is located. You can do this in a shell with (for example): export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib. See here for more details.

License

All of the code contained here is licensed by the GNU General Public License v3.

Credit

Credit to dbasden for his earlier wrapper python-librtlsdr and all the contributers on GitHub.

Copyright (C) 2013 by Roger https://github.com/roger-

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

pyrtlsdr-0.2.1.tar.gz (19.5 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distributions

pyrtlsdr-0.2.1-py3-none-any.whl (23.8 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 3

pyrtlsdr-0.2.1-py2-none-any.whl (23.8 kB view details)

Uploaded Python 2

File details

Details for the file pyrtlsdr-0.2.1.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: pyrtlsdr-0.2.1.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 19.5 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No

File hashes

Hashes for pyrtlsdr-0.2.1.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 c6685ddf6aaff833710dbfff1274eaf01e98836eebe795300451ea4c68177805
MD5 08367162d1f6f848af82e49238afc8b7
BLAKE2b-256 429959cf621baebae57c5f46ee88a106b72bd555d34c7a8ad265c357b5c054fc

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file pyrtlsdr-0.2.1-py3-none-any.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for pyrtlsdr-0.2.1-py3-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 8315d37ec7d565131bc2bc8abf7a1503955c85a8fbc798b5ff7d5e4be7776a17
MD5 be1dacee1d47e00cca8b7fbe20b8bf77
BLAKE2b-256 4dffb12479afebcfba144feebfc85f58d46e710c801be195b86d132c5d7962e9

See more details on using hashes here.

File details

Details for the file pyrtlsdr-0.2.1-py2-none-any.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for pyrtlsdr-0.2.1-py2-none-any.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 c3cb48e66e553e5a97c3f67c48d04f1c82d7f0b63280fa2c0cc10d2666f27bf0
MD5 59ef66ccd53a512603eb4206cdd6539f
BLAKE2b-256 c9af4979eb41b0bfa3b99d9c456ced57c9e1d8ba7ddc5636394d9d180f911c83

See more details on using hashes here.

Supported by

AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page