I have my SatNOGS running with RPI4 and AirSpy R2 for a month now, so I’m still a newbie here
I’m very satisfied with the AirSpy R2 performance compared to an ordinary RTL-SDR, but today I wanted to upgrade to an AirSpy HF+ Discovery to further improve VHF performance and also prepare a station for DK0SB at Sternwarte Bochum, which is also the AMSAT-DL HQ.
When I installed the new SDR it was not detected by SoapySDRUtil and I quickly learned that I need to install https://github.com/airspy/airspyhf
However, after following all the instructions and rebooting, “SoapySDRUtil --probe” still doesn’t find it
Do you have the SoapySDR plugin for the Airspy HF+ installed? You can check it with SoapySDRUtil --info it should print a line that looks similar to this:
thank for your reply, this is what I get… obviously airspyhf is missing. I was trying to install the airsphy hf as described above, but did I perhaps miss something?
What you installed is the Airspy HF+ driver library, which is necessary to use the Airspy HF+. But you also need the SoapySDR plugin for the Airspy HF+ available here: https://github.com/pothosware/SoapyAirspyHF/wiki
tried to install the plugin, but it did not finish as described…
Should have mentioned that I have the pre-build SatNOGS image for the RPI and I’m rather a Linux user than an Linux expert
…
pi@satnogs:~/SoapyAirspyHF/build $ cmake …
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:9 (find_package):
Could not find a package configuration file provided by “SoapySDR”
(requested version 0.4.0) with any of the following names:
SoapySDRConfig.cmake
soapysdr-config.cmake
Add the installation prefix of “SoapySDR” to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
“SoapySDR_DIR” to a directory containing one of the above files. If
“SoapySDR” provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has
been installed.
…
… it works perflectly with the Airspy HF+ Discovery. Will continue to play with some Gain settings, but the results are already nice… it’s quite an improvement.
Sounds good, Peter. I think that for the Airspy HF+ it is best to leave it with automatic gain ON, as it has a rather high dynamic range already, but it will be interesting to see if it can be imnproved with manual gain settings.
Alex, do you have a hint for me how to enable AGC? I couldn’t figure out…
The rest of the settings do not make a big difference as you suggested…
However, I’m very satisfied with the HF+Discovery … I do see quite an improvement even over the Airspy R2… hope to have a few more running soon; but more about that later…
AGC ‘should’ be enabled as the default…
For quite some time the developer of the Airspy HF+ claimed that there would never be a need to turn off the AGC and control gains manually, since the receiver was that good. Of course, those controls eventually were added because there are situations on MF/HF where it does help, but for VHF observations I’d think the AGC should work fine.
I would expect the HF Discovery to be an excellent receiver for the 2m and weather sat bands. It’s a shame there isn’t something similar available for UHF!
I agree…
In fact, the “overall” gain setting seems to have no effect on the HF+ Discovery.
I tried values from 0 to 54 for the Full gain range: [0, 54] dB without any or little difference.
Interesting side node, the CubicSDR connected via SoapyRemote does not show a slider for this when AGC is disabled, only LNA and RF gain which seem to have no effect either.
Beside these limitations, I´m very impressed by the Airspy HF+ Discovery and would strongly recommend it to everyone who wants to listen on VHF… it’s like day and night…
73s Peter
So far it works fine, but since the stanogs-client-ansible-202109022142 my Airspy HF+ Discovery ist behaving totally different.
I’m heaving massive interference on the VHF amateur satellite band (145.800 - 146.000) from FM repeater outputs in Germany, allocated below 145.800 MHz. I even see other strange signals, where I have no clue how that got in… Even a curiosity like this SatNOGS Network - Observation 4707635 (listen to the audio)
When I listen in parallel with an ordinary IC-910 or if I use remote CubicSDR, everything is normal…
I believe the airspyhf driver behaves differently now, any change in configuration?
While the original sensitivity seems to be quite good, it looks like FM repeater band is “mirrored”… maybe a problem with sample rate?
Just updated (reflashed) to the latest SatNOGS client, to find out that “Airspy HF+ Discovery” is still not suported by default…
Oh No… same procedure again…
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ SoapySDRUtil --probe="driver=airspyhf"
######################################################
## Soapy SDR -- the SDR abstraction library ##
######################################################
Probe device driver=airspyhf
Error probing device: SoapySDR::Device::make() no match
Maybe it’s not installed by default ? I can certainly get it installed and listed in the util on both arm64 and amd64 systems:
ii libairspy0:arm64 1.0.9-4 arm64 Tiny and efficient software defined radio receiver - library
ii soapysdr0.7-module-airspy:arm64 0.1.2-2 arm64 Airspy device support for SoapySDR
It’s not located in the OBS but debian packages and has armhf and most common arches available.
Just try a sudo apt install soapysdr0.7-module-airspy ?
Just to say, that I applied the procedures described earlier in this thread and my station with “Airspy HF+ Discovery” is back online on VHF for now… Hope the package will be included in next SatNOGS versions…
same procedure again…