SDR++ Android Public Pre-release

[AlexandreRouma]

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to release the first public pre-release of SDR++ for android. It's still quite early and has a few bugs and quirks that you might run into:

• SDR MUST be plugged in before starting SDR++ and you MUST press refresh in the SDR source you're using before pressing play if you first plugged in the SDR or unplugged/replugged, otherwise expect a crash. The USB handling still needs some work.
• There are still a few UI glitches
• There is no easy way to select a path for recording or file for playback
• The audio sink on Android may have higher latency
• All menus sometimes close when app goes in the background.
• Resizing the menu and/or waterfall is kinda fiddly, be precise when trying to grab the resize bar!!!
• At some size menu sizes, the app crashes. If this happens, start in landscape
• On Samsung devices, the keyboard doesn't always work for some obscure reason...

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

• Android 9.0
• OpenGL 2.1

Since phones usually have a high screen resolution, set the DPI scaling in the Display menu or you'll have a hard time using the app.

Current Device/Protocol Support:

• Airspy
• Airspy HF+
• HackRF
• PlutoSDR (network only)
• RFspace
• RTL-SDR
• RTL-TCP
• SDR++ Server
• SpyServer

In any case, I'd love to get some feedback on it, so feel free to try it out and let me know!

The Android version is now downloadable in the nightly builds: https://www.sdrpp.org/nightly
Please do not ask for help in this thread, use issues instead.
Download Here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z2HPG8RQt8QXsznAq85oewb6TI1lKaL3/view?usp=sharing

PS: If you like this work, feel free to support me on patreon, since putting it on the App Store won't be cheap and I want to make sure it's completely free with no ads!

[F4JBS]

Awesome!

Since you mentioned app stores, do you plan to put it on F-Droid when it's more polished?

73 de F4JBS

[AlexandreRouma]

Yes, it'll likely be on there too. But only when it's the full release. it's still to unstable for my liking, don't want it to be getting bad reviews.

[vladbezgodov]

can you add more options for high dpi scalling? 150%? on my tablet 100% too small and 200% quite big
ps. lenovo tab p11 pro + airspy mini works fine

[AlexandreRouma]

the reason they're not currently available is they cause graphical bugs, they will be available in the final release

[DanLDeon]

This will be awesome. Many thanks to you! I have tried this on 3 devices with an RTL-SDR.

Stock Google Pixel 3a with Android 12, it works very well. I need tiny fingers to make menu selections, but that's to be expected.

Rooted/flashed Google Nexus 7 Tablet (my target device) with Lineage 19.0/Android 12 the graphics are terribly pixelated, making radio selection almost impossible. When I am sure I have the RTL-SDR selected, pressing the play button seemingly does nothing,

Stock Google Nexus 6 with Android 7, installation errors out - and I know that Android 9 is the minimum OS. I was only curious.

Cheers!

[hosek]

Have same issue on Lenovo TB-X606X, now trying to build it by my own and try to fix it, but getting some ninja errors.
@AlexandreRouma btw is possible that's just this issue? - screenshot look same
ocornut/imgui#4698
"It works fine now with OversampleH/V =1."

[AlexandreRouma]

It's not currently buildable because I haven't published the modified libraries. Even if you could build it yourself, it's not gonna fix anything, that imgui issue is not related.

[Dohduck]

What an amazing app! Works on my mobile flawless so far. Unfortunately not useable on tablet as I have the same issue as screenshot above. I hope you get to sort it. If you need any info diag stuff let me know. Keep up the excellent work

[Dohduck]

@AlexandreRouma I think I have either identified or worked around the screen mosaic issue on some Android Tablet devices.

By inversing the screen (Accessibility options) I could make out the layout of menus in the blocky display.
Changing the High-DPI scaling to 100% or 200% then app restart displays the screen correctly. Obviously then turn off the inverse screen setting when sorted.
Not sure what it was set to by default as I couldn't read the screen block font, but perhaps forcing a DPI default setting of 100% post install would help so you may be delivered a small display but at least it's readable to allow further changes on these impacted Android devices.

Now works flawless like my mobile - really pleased.

Thank you

[KonstantinSDR]

Redmi 6 Android 9 has the same problem

[mzac]

I'd like to see if it works on my Lenovo Chromebook since it supports Android apps, however I would have to enable developer mode and that means wiping out all local info. Is there any other way you can provide it to install like as a 'beta' on the Play store?

[DL2MF]

I'd like to see if it works on my Lenovo Chromebook since it supports Android apps, however I would have to enable developer mode and that means wiping out all local info. Is there any other way you can provide it to install like as a 'beta' on the Play store?

Did you try running it with Crostini? I tested several Linux applications running successfully within the Linux subsystem of Chromium OS on my Lenovo Yoga X380.

[mzac]

Good idea I'll try it.

[mzac]

I guess I'll have to try and build it from source since the releases are amd64 only and my Chromebook is aarch64

mzac@penguin:~$ uname -a
Linux penguin 5.10.92-14540-g0aec27ec0722 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Mar 17 18:57:37 PDT 2022 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

[sbourdeauducq]

Also I don't yet have a developer account because it costs like 25€ and my card isn't supported by google.

You can just put it on f-droid. Google doesn't deserve your money anyway.

[mzac]

I can confirm that compiling it on a Chromebook in Crostini works, the only issue is the CPU in my Chromebook is quite slow and the audio is very choppy. Reducing the bandwidth with my rtl-sdr to 1mb makes it better but still not great unfortunately :(

[leetistan]

cheap prepaid samsung galaxy a20, works good with airspy hf+ discovery, bit squished, couldnt find dpi setting

[leetistan]

wow, im an idiot, that looks a lot better, thanks :)

[leetistan]

and found dpi setting :)

[atlex]

@leetistan Where is dpi setting? I can't find it :(

[leetistan]

@leetistan Where is dpi setting? I can't find it :(

its under display, 7th option down, High-DPI Scaling, be sure to fully close sdr++ then start it back up after changing

[FlashlightET]

this gives me hope that it will work on my galaxy a21. i just dont have a usb adapter yet.

[BG7JAF]

xiaomi 9 se + airspyhf+ worked! Good job!

[atlex]

Samsung S21 Ultra, Android 12, One UI 4.0, SDR-RTL V3 works fine!

[yo2ldk]

Alex, excellent job
can you add sound card at source in SDRpp, for audio input ?
TNX in advance !

[HugasRadvilenas]

poco x3 pro android 12 - works without any problem with spyserver as source .

[loic-fejoz]

I can listen to local radio with Rtl-sdr on Android 9.1.0 (Huawei p20 lite).
But not usable from menu display perspective and dpi settings not reachable (hidden).

[vladbezgodov]

the same as pc version you can expand left side menu

[loic-fejoz]

Ok, finally find out how/where to put my big finger. It did try initially but did not worked.
Clearly the zone where to expand the menu is to small.

[leetistan]

amazon fire HD8 tablet 10th gen, 100% dpi scaling, airspy hf+ discovery, audio was a bit choppy, but got stable after about 20 seconds

[parkerlreed]

Tab S7+ on Android 12

Seems to funtion fine UI wise albeit a bit zoomed in and cutting off some elemnts. Don't have my hardware on me to fully test

[parkerlreed]

200% is a nice sweet spot. Now to see if I can find any dumps to simulate an RTL_TCP source

[parkerlreed]

Figured out a way to generate some noise for testing :)

Pipe urandom to a TCP port!

Screen_Recording_20220325-145923.mp4

[veso266]

@parkerlreed how did you generate noise to send to RTL-TCP source?

[kahara]

@veso266

Pipe urandom to a TCP port!

I suspect this involved a tool like netcat(1) or similar.

[parkerlreed]

@veso266

Pipe urandom to a TCP port!

I suspect this involved a tool like netcat(1) or similar.

Indeed.

cat /dev/urandom | nc -lp 1234

[goscickiw]

Works well on my Galaxy S8 Plus (Android 9, not rooted) with a HackRF. SpyServer also works fine. However, I have some questions::

1. Is there an option to lock the order of the menus? It's way too easy to accidentally reorder them while trying to open or close them or use the scroll bar. If there is no such option, could you add it?
2. SDRplay is not in the list of supported devices. Is SDRplay support planned? Also, there is a beta SDRplay driver available for Android, and it works with my RSP1A in other SDR apps, but it has last been updated in early 2019 and its description says that it doesn't support all RSP devices. Could SDR++ have its own driver implemented that would support those devices?
   3. When I use a high sample rate such as 8 MHz, and switch to something else keeping SDR++ working in the background, the audio starts to stutter as if the resources allowed for the app were reduced. However I think this might be a problem with my phone and some settings that need to be changed. Could you point me to the settings I should change?
3. One more thing: Is there an RDS decoder, or will it be added?

[parkerlreed]

3. Try turning off battery optimizations under Settings > Applications > SDR++

If you want more https://dontkillmyapp.com/

[goscickiw]

I have just tried that, but the stuttering still appears when I put the app in background. Maybe it's just because when I do this the phone has to divide its resources between the app and whatever else I'm doing instead of giving it full resources when it's in main focus.

[AlexandreRouma]

that's just how android works, there's no way to get around it with NDK based apps. Only the java code can be made to run as a foreground service which allows it to use a higher amount of CPU while in background.

[goscickiw]

So what about the other questions?

[user1515874884]

Where does this app save Baseband recordings? I didn't find the recordings folder

[user1515874884]

/Android/data/org.sdrpp.sdrpp/files does not contain record files. But I can't install the sd card in my device

[parkerlreed]

Just found them at /data/data/org.sdrpp.sdrpp/files/recordings

Sadly this means without root they are locked off for the time being.

[parkerlreed]

Oh, after you've granted storage access just change the recording path to /sdcard/recordings (Or whatever folder you want)

Just tested and worked correctly.

[user1515874884]

Thanks! Now it works!

[Tiflo62]

Hello, I tried to put them in Downloads or Sounds but when I manually change the path it now appears in red and I can't start recording. Any tip to resolve this issue please?

[targonn]

Thank you for the program!

I have a Pixel 5a connected to the spyserver. Sound is high pitch tone. Lower sample rate didn't help. Tuning and changing the gain won't change anything. Works fine on SDRSharp windows.

[AlexandreRouma]

the spyserver client doesn't support all the features of SDR because it's open source. Use SDR++ server instead.

[targonn]

But you have a spyserver in connection options...

I'll try the sdr++ server. Thank you!

[Mhowser]

Running it on my Moto e 2020 (ginna) android 10. Cant toggle DPI settings. Screen size is 1520 by 720

[parkerlreed]

Take your finger and fiddle with the line just to the right of the left panel. It can be dragged over, just takes soome effort.

[cmnybo]

Why does it require such a recent android version?
Will you be adding support for older devices?

[AlexandreRouma]

Because older android versions don't have the required features.
If your device can't be updated to run android 9 I doubt it has the power to run SDR++

[proba999]

Hi. When will you publish the official RELEASE of the application?

[scottjpalmer]

Working well on Samsung S20FE with RTLSDR, thanks!

[weissekat]

Works on Galaxy S10, internal DPI settings will be highly appreciated. Good work!

[AlexandreRouma]

it already exists... Display -> High-DPI scaling. It's even mentioned in the post...

[weissekat]

Will check, thanks.

[weissekat]

Nice, the software works with internal DPI settings even better. Initially, I used only phone scaling settings (and overlooked Display menu) - these also affect visual.

[kman62]

Installed on Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 and an AirSpy R2 and it works except the display is not scaling correctly. Need to play around to see how can I fix the scaling issue on my device as mentioned above Display -> High-DPI scaling.

[kman62]

Ok, I was able to drag the panel over to see the DPI settings. I then changed the High DPI Setting to 200%, and the display looks much better.

[proba999]

Hello, dear SDR++ developers!
Please tell me if a new beta version is planned, taking into account all the wishes and additions described in the messages above?
Thank you!

[kenny924]

I installed on an Android 9 Tablet. It looks like it loads fine but the screen is so dim that you cannot make out anything on the screen. This is the only program that dims out like this. Any recommendations? Thanks

[TechMindsYT]

Can anyone help resolve this issue please?

Lenovo with Android 10. Installs okay, but screen is really dark and unusable.

Any suggestions please? :-)

[Dohduck]

How I resolved this...
By inversing the screen (using Android Settings Accessibility options) I could make out the layout of menus in the blocky display - comparing to a device that displayed correctly.
Changing the "High-DPI scaling" (if you can work out which "blocky" option it is) to 100% or 200% then app restart displays the screen correctly.
Obviously then turn off the inverse screen setting when sorted.

[kenny924]

I cannot figure out which block changes the DPI settings On Aug 30, 2022, at 12:59 PM, Dohduck ***@***.***> wrote:  How I resolved this... By inversing the screen (using Android Settings Accessibility options) I could make out the layout of menus in the blocky display - comparing to a device that displayed correctly. Changing the "High-DPI scaling" (if you can work out which "blocky" option it is) to 100% or 200% then app restart displays the screen correctly. Obviously then turn off the inverse screen setting when sorted. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#703 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AN3WCOUCCVLU3EPWWVYR35TV3ZDZBANCNFSM5RRQXROA>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[RadPony]

Hello my dear devs who actually made that great programm for my own joy and fun in the world of sdr. So i want to be sure about the bug which happends sometimes on Android phones (my phone is HUAWEI Y5 2019, Android version is 9). Its about what TechMindsYT had in their last message, basically the dark screen issue, where eveything is blank black or whatever happens with that, basically nothing is usable. And im sure that is not only my issue and here is also can be enought people with the same bug. So lets point it out, is it just because the Android verion is pre-release and its kinda far from being perfect well working programm, so it can be bugged or here is the actual way to fix it? Ye i tried to change the DPI/Scale or whatever you call it, but it didnt help at all.

[AlexandreRouma]

You're probably still using the old version linked here. Use the nightly as instructed.

[mauroS123]

I cannot connect to my spyserver running on a raspberry.
I have tried to set "SDR++ server" and "Spyserver" on the dropdown menu but no one works.
On my pc I use "AIRSPY server network" but can't find it on this android app.

[tucco1967]

I have the same issue. No "Refresh" button in these options

[TabajaraLabs]

Any chance to have it compiled to Android 8? Anyway thanks a lot for your development and greetings from Brazil! =)

[francisuk1989]

Dout it as OpenGL will be very old for A8.

Out of question? what device?

[Phoenix6478]

Very nice, thanks a lot, this is the best SDR app for Android! Are there any plans to include support for SDRplay devices like the RSPdx?

[francisuk1989]

Try downloading from nightly build for SDR++ APK here https://www.sdrpp.org/nightly

[JanneTur]

I remember reading somewhere in this forum that they do not include SDRRplay in android builds yet.. I´m waiting it also..

[cyber-atomus]

Android 12 on Xiaomi, Airspy Mini on USB

• while starting app one must be very quick to tap the permission to use device
• refresh doesn't work (think this is because of said permission to use the USB device)
• even with correctly detected device - tapping ''start'' button does nothing, Airspy is not starting

Already tried disabling battery optimization etc - de nada

I'll try to check with rtlsdr if I find one in my junkbox.

Anyways - keep the good work! Thanks!

[cmgam]

Hi
Can SDR+++ be used with Sdrplay?
Thanks

[cmnybo]

I've gotten my RSP1A to work using the SDRplay driver for Android. It acts as an rtl_tcp server that SDR++ can connect to.
Unfortunately, that driver limits it to a couple MHz of bandwidth. It's also a buggy piece of junk that SDRplay hasn't updated since 2019 and is not really suitable for use.

[cmgam]

Hi cmnybo
Thanks for your response.
So for the RSP1A what software (if any) works on Android?
Thanks again
Regards

[cmnybo]

Everything that I've found uses the same driver.
The RSP1A will run, but it's limited to the bandwidth and resolution of an RTL-SDR and the driver frequently crashes.

[cmgam]

Hi
Thanks.
Regards

[hudy000]

Android + hackrf not working, always crash if push PLAY