A few weeks ago, I reached out to SDRplay by email and on LinkedIn with a proposal to add support for their receivers to stream1090. I haven’t heard back yet, but an opportunity to experiment came from a friend.
Francesco, IZ0YDF / @frank-ydf, owns an RSP1B that he normally uses for HF reception, alongside a Raspberry Pi running an ADS-B receiver. He kindly connected the RSP1B to his Pi and ADS-B antenna, then gave me remote access through Tailscale.
With that setup, help from coding agents, and several rounds of testing, we now have experimental RSP1B support running on a Raspberry Pi 3 at 4 MS/s.
The integration uses the official SDRplay API directly, without SoapySDR or other intermediate layers. stream1090 handles demodulation and can feed the decoded messages to readsb. There’s also Prometheus telemetry to help evaluate signal levels and gain settings.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Gain is currently manual. Francesco’s setup uses an AliExpress amplifier with a SAW filter, so other antenna and amplifier configurations will likely need different settings.
- We’re still investigating sample gaps. We’ve also observed undervoltage events on the test Pi, but haven’t established whether they share a cause. Use a reliable power supply and cable.
- Testing has focused on one installation, in a valley with relatively little traffic. Results from busier locations and different hardware would be especially useful.
There’s more work to do, but the branch is ready for other RSP1B owners to try.
Huge thanks to Francesco for making the hardware available!
Have an RSP1B sitting in a drawer? Give it a try!
Experimental branch · Setup guide
Please share your setup, results, and any issues in the stream1090 community discussion. Include your hardware, sample rate and gain settings where possible - feedback from different reception conditions will help guide the next steps.
