PCI Shortwave Receiver

payman writes "WiNRADiO Communications has just announced news of its forthcoming WR-G303i PCI based shortwave, digital radio, narrowband FM receiver. This is said to be "the world's first dedicated shortwave receiver on a PC card. It is also the first commercially available receiver where the entire final intermediate frequency stage and an all-mode demodulator are entirely executed in software, running on a personal computer." Winradio has in the past supported Linux for its products (see Linradio), and it most likely will continue to do so with the WR-G303i."

Comments

WiNRADiO?

[aronc]

If they plan Linux support, why exactly is it called the "WiNRADiO" (complete with the cool-in-1992 lower case i's)?

Ohhhhhh...

[TheSHAD0W]

When you said PC-card, I thought it might be PCMCIA.

Now THAT would be a fun card to stick into my HP 200LX. :-)

Re:Ohhhhhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you said PC-card, I thought it might be PCMCIA

Yeah me too until I read the title of the article, "PCI Shortwave Receiver." Oh wait I read that first.

Re:Ohhhhhh...

[waddgodd]

They make PCMCIA versions of the rest of their lineup: I doubt one will be long in coming. Of course, the rest of their lineup also starts at $500, so don't expect cheap...

Very Cool

[m0rph3us0]

This looks pretty cool, and does 6Mhz AM, little known fact that you can listen to lightning storms on 6Mhz AM world wide. If forget the homepage of the group but there is a group using 6 Mhz AM and RDF equiptment to plot lightning strikes across the world. If anyone has a link to the group it would be much appreciated, can't even find it on google. --morph

Poor man's spectrum analyzer??

[Newer Guy]

God, I hope so! An HP or Tek costs the same as a small house.

Greaaaaat.

[Matey-O]

Like I don't hear enough Clearchannel radio in the CAR!

{Note the subtle humor before modding}

Re:Greaaaaat.

[Reziac]

Nonsense. Most shortwave reception is anything but clear!

(note twisted response to subtle humour ;)

Re:Okay, now...

[m0rph3us0]

short wave is generally used for long distance communications, its very useful if say you want to listne to a world cup game in italian and live in a non-italian country. Shortwave is used by many people but its not as popular as your standard commerical AM / FM frequencies. If you want to listen to your local KISS 96.whatever station this card isnt for you. If however you want international radio and things like that then shortwave is very cool. I don't know if the reciever my ham friend was using was short wave or not but we always listen to the space shuttle comms. channels with his gear. Someone on here can probably tell me if shortwave is the frequency they use. something tells me its in the 140Mhz area which is not shortwave.

GNU Radio?

[Russ Nelson]

If these guys have Linux support, then what is Eric Blossom doing with GNU Radio? And why have these two articles about SDR been posted today?
-russ

Re:Limitations?

[the eric conspiracy]

What bands are locked out due to ECPA and similar laws abroad?

None I imagine. This is a shortwave reciever, after all.

What DRM is included in the hardware and/or software?

Digital Radio Mondial (DRM) is a software option.

You really should read the article for further details.

Anyone here a ham radio buff?

[ShooterNeo]

Granted, ham radio buffs are a thing of the past (I bet those same geeks were the first people on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s) but I always had one basic question.

Since shortwave is more or less a party line with pure analog transmission, what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else? Sure, if you did that in the US FCC troops would come bust down your door but what's to stop, say, Sadaam from having a party one day and jaming all short wave channels with a few hundred megawatts of propoganda.

Re:Anyone here a ham radio buff?

[fatboy]

Since shortwave is more or less a party line with pure analog transmission,

There is plenty of digital traffic on HF.

what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else?

The ITU. Even though I do remeber Castro took 1510 WLAC here in Nashville, along with other stations on the East Coast, off the air around 1989 because of "TV Marti". (Sorry for no links. I'm lazy.)

Re:Anyone here a ham radio buff?

[GigsVT]

ham radio buffs are a thing of the past

Uhhh, not quite.

what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else?

It happens. Also see this.

but what's to stop, say, Sadaam from having a party one day and jaming all short wave channels with a few hundred megawatts of propoganda

It would take a hell of a lot of transmitters and electricity, antennas, etc, and you could easily track the source of the transmission through triangulation.

Re:Anyone here a ham radio buff?

[the eric conspiracy]

ham radio buffs are a thing of the past

Ham radio hobbyists provide an important redundant channel that is extremely difficult to knock off the air. When the hurricanes and earthquakes are done, all a Ham needs is a car battery and a length of wire to make contacts all over the world. Here is an article on use of Ham radio during some problems on Mir:

http://www.hamradio-online.com/1997/jun/mircrisi s. html

And here is one on activities associated with Isadore that are in progress as I type this:

http://www.arrl.org/

There are currently about 680,000 licensed ham operators in the US.

This a large number to relegate to the past..

I bet those same geeks were the first pepple on the internet and the early online services like compuserve in the late 80s)

Hams were much more likely to run their own BBS than hang out on a service like Compuserve.

what stops an unscrupulous person from spamming it and making it unusable to everyone else

Te short answer is: The Laws of Physics.

It is possible to jam a few frequencies here and there, but to jam shortwave transmissions world-wide takes something with the power of a solar flare. That's a lot more than a few hundred megawatts.

During the cold war the Soviet Union + Warsaw Pact tried (and mostly failed) to jam transmissions like the Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, KOL Israel, Radio Tirana and the BBC to their own populations. Estimates were that they were spending about $1 billion per year, had 200 large scale jamming stations and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR.

Re:Anyone here a ham radio buff?

[jelle]

"and were putting out about 1 terawatt of EMR."

Where did they get all the electricity for that? Especially considering that the total electricity generating _capacity_ was 811 gigawatts for the US in 2000 (note all generators/plants are probably never at peak capacity at the same time)?

I'd say that terawatt number is as reliable as a unmaintained 10 year old car...

Re:Okay, now...

[fatboy]

What can this actually do for me? I read the article (read: advertisement) and I'm still lost on what this does.

With a DSP directly in the IF section, any damn thing you want it to. :) Instead of having circuitry to "detect" the information modulated on the radio signal, you use mathematical algorithms to "detect" that information. It's AM/FM/AFSK/FSK/PSK/Spread Spectrum/SSB and any other mode that can be devised capable. You simply write software to detect the information you want.


I know it's not the answer you were looking for, but I hope someone else was.

Dumb Question

[jchawk]

What exactly does this device do? It lets me listen to radio stations on my computer? Or is this picking up the ham radio frequencies?

Could someone give me an overview of what exactly this is useful for?

I'm not trying to troll, I'm just a little confused about what this thing does and what it is useful for.

Re:Dumb Question

[kingsqueak]

Yes.

It will do a bit of both. It covers spectrum up to 30Mhz, in that range there is plain old AM radio, HAM radio, commercial marine, military. There's all sorts of transmission modes in there too; plain voice on AM, voice on SSB, morse code on SSB, FM, data of several types.

One of the things you can do for example is receive weather fax's, you can 'snoop' other forms of data communications as well with add-on accessories. Not sure how the radios on a card work with add-ons or if the software can do it outright inline.

What I found odd was the mention that this was a first of some sort, there have been PC based radios similar to this for a long while, and third party linux frontend support as well. Check out freshmeat, there are other radio frontend controller projects too.

Personally I like having a seperate radio device, it's better for the toy factor and at least a little bit safer as far as picking up static discharges on the antennas, which just creeps me out with antennas that go direct to a PCI card.

Re:Dumb Question

[Glytch]

Shortwave is great for long-distance transmissions. Think in terms of thousands of kilometers. End result: you get to listen to radio stations from other continents. Not terribly impressive in the days of internet radio, I'll admit, but it's still pretty cool. It doesn't require anything but a decent receiver (good ones can be had for less than a hundred bucks US, don't listen to obsessed hobbyists who tell you different) and some batteries.

I'm especially fond of Deutsche Wella (Germany's international broadcaster) and Radio Netherlands.

I don't know anything about ham radio, so I don't know if this card would be any good for that. This looks like a fun card to play with. I've been using the mic jack on my PC's sound card to record shows, but it's an older model and I have to turn it on and tune it manually. With one of these cards I could just set a cron job and not have to be on hand.

Re:Dumb Question

[Reziac]

Thanks for the link. Radio Nederland was my fave back in the day. I even bought a vinyl music festival LP from them back when. Along with the BBC, my other faves were Radio Kiev and Radio Moscow, both had really good music shows and some interesting culture discussions and the like.

Ah, nostalgia, aka "I feel old" :)

Re:Dumb Question

[ncc74656]

The IF in my very ragged terms is what is used to 'mix' with the signal input to create the output.

You described the local oscillator and its output, not the IF. Most radios use a variable-frequency local oscillator for tuning...its output and the antenna input (possibly RF-amplified) are fed into a mixer. The mixer produces sum and difference signals on all input frequencies; the frequency you want to pick off is the intermediate frequency (IF). A fixed-frequency tuned circuit picks off this signal for demodulation, amplification, etc. As an example, let's say you want to tune in 840 kHz on the broadcast AM band. The IF used in an AM radio is (typically) 455 kHz. If the local oscillator produces 385 kHz, the 840-kHz input will be downmixed to 455 kHz (840-385=455). Tuning the broadcast band requires a local oscillator that produces anything from 55 to 1245 kHz. (Note that if the local oscillator could produce 1295 kHz, you could pick up 840 kHz at what would appear as "1750 kHz" on the dial (1295-840=455). Better shortwave receivers employ two or three mixers at different IFs to make sure each station only appears once. FM receivers use two mixers as well (1st IF is 10.7 MHz, 2nd IF is the same 455 kHz used for AM).)

IFs are typically fixed-frequency tuned circuits, since it's easier to make a good fixed-frequency tuned circuit than a good variable-frequency tuned circuit (TRF receivers and crystal receivers are examples of radios built around variable-frequency tuned circuits). Since the "circuit" involved in the WinRadio is really just some software, they aren't as bound by the limitations of real coils/capacitors/etc. and can use whatever IF they want.

Re:Okay, now...

[southern]

I think most of the shuttle traffic is done up around the 1.2Ghz now these days. But all over the USA mission control re-broadcast on the amateur frequencies. Some shortwave is use during launch and landing.

Atencion: Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero

[plimsoll]

This could be a great opportunity to further explore the fascinating world of so-called numbers stations; espionnage TX's from shadowy intelligence organizations (as if there were any other kind) all around the globe- encrypted with one-time pads and allowing agents to receive orders with nothing more than a modified walkman.

An excerpt from NPR's Lost & Found Sound:
"Eventually, if listeners dig around [the shortwave spectrum] long enough, they'll tune across voices reciting endless strings of numbers. These broadcasts have been heard for at least 40 years. The signals are powerful, but they contain no information about location of the transmitter or the intended audience. Most listeners linger for a short time, then tune away, utterly baffled."

When I discovered these myself, I found them bizarre, chilling- and intriguing. In order to get some background, I ordered a 4-CD set from Irdial recordings in the UK called The Conet Project... highly reccomended.

What is perhaps the most surprising is that the number of numbers stations boradcasting on the shortwave band are only increasing- variously attributed to the increasing sophistication of organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist/separatist organizations and an increasingly fractious global intelligence community.

Do follow the links above if this intrigues you in the slightest- and just try going back to your insular world-view afterwards; "the enemy" is out there, and he's hiding right out in the open.

Re:Atencion: Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero

[Reziac]

Back in the 1970s I was a heavy shortwave listener and I remember those "numbers stations" well. They were sometimes an object of discussion on regular shortwave stations!

When I moved to California in 1984, I was appalled to discover that shortwave signals here are too weak to listen to -- couldn't get ANYthing. In Montana, I got tons of shortwave stations, plus sometimes could hear Radio Nederland's *AM* broadcasts from the Antilles!!

Re:Atencion: Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero

[io333]

I don't know where you are in Cali, but when I was in the Santa Clara Valley, I could pick up most stuff being broadcast in the US, and plenty from southern & northern east Asia. With a really lousy CW radio, no real antenna, and a horrid light dimmer in the next apartment that would always flood the whole SW spectrum with the most irritating buzz.

You need, in this order:

1. Antenna, Antenna, Antenna! Go to RadioShack and get their 75 foot length of copper SW antenna wire & figure out a good place to string it. Follow the directions.

2. The step above should solve 99.9999999 percent of your problems, but failing that, get a better radio. $99 should get you quite a decent rig at Fry's Electronics.

Re:Atencion: Seis Siete Tres Siete Cero

[Reziac]

When I tripped thru eastern/central Wash in the 70s, Calif. in 1981 (Sacto/Auburn area) and 1982 (San Diego/L.A.) I brought along the very portable radio I'd used in Montana for over a decade... and was astonished to find that its normally strong reception (even without an external antenna) was reduced to little or zilch. When I moved to the L.A. area in '84, I did try it with my big antenna (vertical mast with a bunch of secondary wire, worked *really* well) that in MT was only needful for weak stations, and still got nothing really listenable. Dunno if I was just "lucky" or what, but had no luck to speak of anywhere up and down the Pacific interior basin (beyond the coastal range).

Haven't tried since I moved up here to the high desert. That radio croaked a while back and my older s/w, tho a honkin' big serious outfit my dad paid big bucks for, never had the reception the cheap-assed portable did. (And admittedly by now I'm out of the listening habit, but it's still fun to remember.)

Much of interior CA and SoCal is effectively radio-dead even for clear channel (the real meaning, not the chain) AM stations, and often you're lucky even to get local stations -- frex I can't get a trace of the Albuquerque truckers' station that is blast-your-ears-strong all thru the entire mountain and midwest regions, even to southern Canada. Dunno how relevant that is to s/w.

BTW I wouldn't touch anything from Fry's that wasn't namebrand and independently warrantied. Fry's pulls too much scummy crap. Go read the writeup from Forbes magazine a few years ago (it comes up on their site if you search for Fry's). If anything it understates the problem.

/. Article

[plimsoll]

Sorry to reply to my own comment on this, but I (now) see this has been covered a bit already...

Crack a "Numbers" Station
Posted by Hemos on Sat 27 May 01:35PM
from the cool-insight dept.
boss soul writes: "On Friday, NPR did an excellent story on those infamous 'Numbers Stations' that broadcast on shortwave radio. Since the 1950s, these stations have been broadcasting nothing but an unidentified human voice reading a string of numbers. Though most people believe that these broadcasts are used by intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents abroad, there has never been any way to confirm this ... until now! The makers of "The Conet Project" (a four-CD set of numbers-station recordings) have thrown down the proverbial gauntlet and announced a series of "cryptographic challenges" -- the object of which is to crack an actual numbers station broadcast. Dust off your Crypto caps, everyone -- I want to see a slashdotter win this one! "

Re:/. Article

[dbrutus]

I wouldn't want to crack a numbers station, I'd want to know how to receive it, and generate a cancellation broadcast.

Now that'd be an interesting project.

one ham's opinion

[frovingslosh]

I'm a ham, such items normally interest me.

I visited the site (at least it's not slashdoted), but I have no interest in this hack. Here are my complaints:

I wasted time looking at their site, but s far as I could tell they don't want to tell me the price on the thing. If the price is listed anywhere it is certainly not easy to find, even a targeted price range. Do they think I'm so hard up to have this that I'll tell them I want it even if they will not tell the price?

While they don't seem to want to tell the price, they did mention that there will be a standard software demodulator and an optional "Professional demodulator". And more demodulators later. They don't say what the professional demodulator will cost, but as it is optional it certainly will cost. So why would I want to buy their stuff and have crippled non-professional software? And on top of that they know the professional modulator can be replaced with something else in the future that will obviously cost me more money!

OK, I know it costs money to develop software, but in this case when the software is tightly tied to their hardware, I want a company that sells me the hardware and then supports me, not one that tries to bleed me dry, even delivering less than professional software with the basic package and then asking if I want the good software! Of course I want the good software. What I want even more is good open source software, or even hardware interface specs so that I can roll my own. But that is hardly likely to be forthcoming from a company that looks at their hardware customers as cash cows for their software.

There are other issues as well, the inside of a PC is hardly the best environment for a RF receiver. But I might be willing to experiment with this hardware if it was sold with decent software without a bait and switch approach, and the company was more open about things like the prices and the hardware interface.

Re:one ham's opinion

[mindstrm]

Winradio tends to have open SDK's for their products, and be free with their specifications. Professional stuff is often simply a software change, not hardware.

I'm sure they provide an SDK so you can write your own demod if you don't like the one you are willing ot pay for.

Also, call any shop that deals Winradio, they will be more than happy to tell you their prices, I'm sure.

Perhaps the price isn't on yet because they aren't ready to sell them yet.

Re:one ham's opinion

[frovingslosh]

I'm sure they provide an SDK so you can write your own demod if you don't like the one you are willing ot pay for.

You can be sure of it if you want, but since I saw absolutely no mention of it on their webpages I'm just as sure it's not available. And I see no reason to try to track down the price on this thing. Maybe it isn't ready yet, so what? They could at least give a suggested retail price or a "less than $xxx" price. If they can't do that then the rest of the advertisement (and that's clearly what it is) is a waste of my time. The real insult is that they want me to give my e-mail address and sign up to be perpetually spammed by them, but can't give me the basic information to see if this thing is an incredible bargain or an overpriced hack.

Re:one ham's opinion

[io333]

> I wish y'all would put an estimated price up on the page... maybe
> it's there somewhere but I didn't see it.
>
>

Thank you for your enquiry. The price will be approx US$500.

Thank you for your interest in our products and we look forward
to be of service to you again soon.

Best regards,
Martin Kent

SWL Blah Blah Blah

[alamut]

why would i even bother?

for 300$ US i can get an Icom PCR-1000. it does 60Hz-1295Mhz (stupid cell blocked, bah!), has windows, linux and even macos support, only needs a serial interface (works just fine on a USB->serial adapter, even), and i can place it as far as i want from my RF noisy computer shack.

and it uses 13.8vdc. get the picture?

did i mention it was 300$?

Re:SWL Blah Blah Blah

[John Jorsett]

for 300$ US i can get an Icom PCR-1000. it does 60Hz-1295Mhz (stupid cell blocked, bah!),

According to the Icom specs, the lower frequency is 100 khz. And in a couple of minutes I was able to find instructions for unblocking it (even the ones with serial #s above 4000).

Re:Distributed Computing Telescope

[Space cowboy]

In a word, yes. I have a WinRadio 1550e, which allows monitoring within the waterhole (~1.4GHz) which is where most amateur seti astronomers look.

I have a dish, which had to get signoff from the secretary of state before I could install it :-) The picture shows the width of the house, with the dish being approx 4m across...

Making an interferometer poses major problems with time resolution though - to merge all these amateur radio telescopes together would (a) take a huge chunk of bandwidth for each telescope (ADSL ain't enough...), (b) need excellent synchronisation between the telescopes, which almost all of us don't have, and (c) need the dishes to be steerable, which most of them aren't...

There is however a project argus doing the same thing with lots of individual telescopes. As soon as I'm happy with the s/w running on mine, I'll be a member of the group :-)

And no, no aliens yet :-)

USB or FW interface?

[g4dget]

That kind of device cries out for a USB or FireWire interface. It doesn't need the extra bandwidth of the PCI bus, but it would be nice to be able to move it from machine to machine without having to take the computer apart.

Something in that direction is the ICOM PCR-100 receiver (serial port for control, audio output for--audio). Unfortunately, open source software seems less common in the amateur radio and shortwave communities--people seem to come from a DOS world, which limits what you can do with many of the computer controllable receivers and radios. Still, there is some software, e.g., http://qsy.to/pcr/control.html.

That's one honking "PC card"

[jpellino]

"...the world's first dedicated shortwave receiver on a PC card."

Don't force it, get a bigger hammer. Or an editor. (It's that way on their site too...)

Really..

[mindstrm]

Are you sure you are talking about the same product? The winradio cards I look at do all KINDS of neat digital decoding.

They will follow trunking, decode pager data, listen to digital transmission, decode satellite imagery, etcetera....

Does a Sony radio do that? Or even a grundig?