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Watch a band in SDR++

Stock SDR++ plays an FM station from the board over the USB cable, on any OS.

SDR++ receiving 99.5 to 103.5 MHz from this board: eleven FM stations in the spectrum and waterfall, tuned to Radio Nova on 101.5 MHz with its RDS text decoded. The source panel on the left shows the PlutoSDR source with the FPGA /8 decimator on at 4.0 MHz.

  1. Install SDR++ from sdrpp.org or your distribution.
  2. Connect the board's USB 2.0 socket and power it from a mains charger. After about 40 s it answers at 192.168.2.1.
  3. Start SDR++. Under Source, choose PlutoSDR, press Refresh, and pick the device named FISH Ball PlutoSDR Rev.A (Z7020/AD9361).
  4. Set the sample rate to 2.0 MHz, Bandwidth to Auto, Gain Mode to Manual and Gain to about 40 dB.
  5. Under Radio, choose WFM. Type a station's frequency in the box at the top (101.5 MHz in the picture) and press play.

You should see: FM stations in the spectrum and waterfall, and hear the one you tuned.

Good to know
USB carries about 20 MB/s = 5 MS/s; above that whole blocks are lost, with no error anywhere
stock SDR++ receives on RX1 only, and never transmits
one program at a time the board has one receive buffer

No device, streaks, or clicks?

symptom cause and fix
no PlutoSDR device after Refresh the board is not answering on USB; ./devkit status says why
streaks across the waterfall, clicks in the audio samples lost: the rate is above what USB carries, or another program is streaming from the board
stations sit slightly off their frequency set Freq. corr. (ppm) from ./devkit clock measure

More: install the patched SDR++ for RX2 and the decimator, stream 20 MS/s to SDR++, listen to DAB+ radio, and every setting on the SDR++ page.