SDRNative for Python

A library for direct control of SDR hardware, raw IQ sampling, DVB-T transport stream reception, w/ low-level device access. Provides tuning, synchronous and asynchronous capture.

Python 3.10+ is required. Supported hardware is currently limited to RTL2832U receivers with R820T-family tuners.

Installation

python -m pip install sdrnative

A supported RTL2832U receiver and the appropriate USB driver or access permissions are needed for hardware use. The native library is distributed with the platform-specific package; no separate CMake build is required.

python -m sdrnative

This prints the native version, ABI and detected receivers.

Basic Usage

Raw 8-bit IQ samples are returned as interleaved unsigned I/Q bytes. Frequencies and sample rates are specified in Hz.

from sdrnative import Device, list_devices

print(list_devices())

with Device.open(0) as dev:
    dev.iq_start(100_700_000, 2_400_000)
    with open("capture.iq", "wb") as output:
        for _ in range(16):
            output.write(dev.read(256 * 1024))

For native DVB-T reception, supply a local multiplex frequency and a supported bandwidth (6, 7 or 8 MHz):

from sdrnative import Device

with Device.open(0) as dev:
    dev.dvbt_start(557_500_000, 7_000_000)
    print("lock stage:", dev.wait_lock(5000))
    print(dev.signal_quality())
    with open("capture.ts", "wb") as output:
        for _ in range(16):
            output.write(dev.read())

For asynchronous reads, start the mode first and use AsyncStream:

from sdrnative import AsyncConfig, Device

with Device.open(0) as dev:
    dev.iq_start(100_700_000)
    with dev.async_stream(AsyncConfig(queue_depth=16)) as stream:
        for block in stream.read_many(4):
            print(block.sequence, len(block.data))

Device and AsyncStream support context managers. Synchronous read() can return empty bytes on timeout; asynchronous read() returns None on timeout, while iteration skips timeouts. Only one asynchronous consumer is supported per device. Native failures raise SDRNativeError subclasses.

The source repository contains further capture programs under examples/python/.

MPL-2.0.