r/hackrf

FoxSDR a new SDR receiver for Windows, built from scratch in a clean-room environment

I've been building Fox SDR, a from-the-ground-up SDR receiver app for Windows. It's a complete clean-room implementation no cde read from or derived from any existing SDR project (SDR++, GQRX, etc.), everything written fresh from published specs and standards, with permissively-licensed dependencies only.

Features so far:

• Wideband receiver with spectrum + waterfall, AM/FM/SSB/CW demodulation, RDS decoding, click-to-tune
• SoapySDR hardware support (developed and verified on a USRP B200; RTL-SDR and others via Soapy modules)
• Full browser remote control the entire app is also usable from a web browser on your LAN with feature parity: waterfall, tuning, audio streaming, map, decoders, even plugin installs
• Plugin system with a public catalogue: ADS-B (verified against real off-air traffic), AIS, APRS, POCSAG, SSTV (Martin/Scottie), aircraft registration lookup, and more
• Built-in map showing decoded aircraft, vesels, and APRS stations, with plugin-supplied basemap tiles
• IQ recording, bookmarks, scanner, frequency presets
• Windows installer, no telemetry games, no account required
• Ask For any feature you need it will be built we aim to add every feature with in one week from notification

Links:

• Website: https://foxsdr.com
• Plugin catalogue: https://github.com/wonderingStars/foxsdr-plugins
• Main repo: https://github.com/wonderingStars/foxsdr

Hi recently received this, but it is crashing pretty regularly. It is happening in various apps but as an example in receive>audio, swapping through AM/FM/FM etc and it will do as pictured after only a few changes. I know this is a pretty new device, is this just early firmware that will mature into something more stable? Currently running Mayhem 2.4.0 Which is labelled as a stable release on the github repo.

A few weeks ago I posted about **mayhem-b200** — PortaPack Mayhem's interface and its ~103 apps rebuilt as a native PC application, originally driving an Ettus USRP B200. Since then it's grown a **web portal**, and that's what this post is about.

## What's new

**It's no longer B200-only.** The radio side now runs through **sdrlink**, a small open server that puts any SDR on the network. It has a native UHD backend for USRPs, and a **SoapySDR connector for everything else** — RTL-SDR dongles, HackRF One, Airspy / Airspy HF+, LimeSDR, PlutoSDR, bladeRF, SDRplay... if there's a Soapy module for it, it should work. The apps automatically adapt to whatever radio is attached (gain ranges, bandwidth, TX capability all follow the hardware's actual caps).

**The web portal.** All of the apps in a browser grid — searchable, grouped by category, launch anything with a click. Apps used to just mirror their 240×320 screen into the browser; now there are **native panels** built for a real display:

* **ADS-B** — live aircraft table plus a map with real OpenStreetMap streets

* **AIS** — a dedicated vessel chart

* **Maps everywhere** — every geo-capable app (APRS, radiosonde, EPIRB, wardriving...) gets a proper street map, not a blank grid

* **Live spectrum + waterfall** streamed over WebSocket (FFT is done server-side, so it's light on the browser)

* Native tables, consoles and receiver controls for the rest

Everything is open source (GPL-2.0-or-later), the wire protocol is a published spec, and the whole thing runs on Windows and Linux.

## Looking for beta testers

This is one person's project and it has been tested hardest on my own bench (USRP B200 — live ADS-B aircraft decoded off the air, ~2000 unit tests passing). The SoapySDR path opens it up to hardware I don't own, which is exactly where I need your help:

* **If anything doesn't work — tell me.** Any radio, any app, any browser. A short note with what you plugged in and what happened is enough.

* **If there's a feature you want — ask.** Seriously. I will build any feature you ask for, providing I have the time. The native panels above exist because they were the obvious things people would want; your requests set what comes next.

Drop a comment or open an issue on the repo. Even "I tried it with an RTL-SDR and it worked" is genuinely useful data.

you need the both repos if you are using anything other than a ettus b200

Github repo : https://github.com/wonderingStars/mayhem-b200

Github repo https://github.com/wonderingStars/sdrlink-beta

Adsb is working fine, but i dont get any weathersensor in ger on 433.920.

Any idea/tips?

This may be a little too far down the AI rabbit hole for a few of you, but I'd like to report my results from just a few days of work.

It started with Hermes Agent. No this is not an ad for them, not affiliated in any way. I jsut use it as a harness because it suits my needs, you may want to use openwebui or openclaw or any of the harnesses out there, that's not what important.

I gave it the root password to my debian vm and proxmox host, and the AI SSH'd in and first setup an API key for hygiene purposes then used it to create an ssh key on the debian box (again, for hygiene) and setup usb passthrough on proxmox so the lxc could talk to the hardware, then installed gnu radio tools on the debian host, establilshed communcations with the hackrf porta pack, correctly determined what it was, and updated the firmware to the latest mayhem for me.

It then started scanning the band from bottom to top and built a db of local signals in the area to expect. Its scanning the entire available spectrum every 2 seconds and notifies me when it sees a new signal. It then switches to fine resolution and listens real hard at max sample res to get a good idea of exactly what it is, then reports the whole thing back to me.

i'm pretty blown away by all this. I expected some kind of result but wow.

edit: I had my guy write up a how-to if you want to do it yourself:
https://github.com/h00nigan/sparky-setup-guide/blob/master/Sparky-Setup-Guide.md

2nd edit: I'm thinking about giving him a yaggi on a servo he can control so I can get direction as well as range/signal strength.

3rd edit: We just chased a signal down to an undershielded crystal oscillator in the plc that controls my 3d filament dryer. Its SCREAMING in rf at 10mhz.

deleted the last Post because the image was made using AI it was like a promote image from bing ai

Hi all,

I've spent the last while building sdrlink — a small server that runs next to your radio and exposes it over the network with a documented protocol. Tuning, gain, sample rate, and raw IQ streaming, so a client can drive your SDR from another machine without linking a vendor SDK.

The reason it exists: I wanted a PortaPack Mayhem-style app suite running on a PC against a real SDR. That client is mayhem-b200 — open source, GPL, ~90 apps ported from the Mayhem firmware, including an ADS-B receiver with a live aircraft map. sdrlink is the piece that lets it talk to hardware that isn't the USRP I develop against.

What I actually need testers for, honestly: I've verified all of this against an Ettus B200. The SoapySDR path — RTL-SDR, HackRF, Airspy, LimeSDR, PlutoSDR, BladeRF — is written, routed, and unit-tested, but I have never had one of those radios in front of it. The code reaches SoapySDR::Device::make() correctly; whether it then works with your dongle is exactly the unknown. If it falls over on an RTL-SDR v3 I'd genuinely rather find out from you

Straight answers to the things you'll ask:

• Windows x64 only right now. Linux is doable, not done.
• The connector ships as a binary during the beta. The client is fully open source; the wire protocol is documented, so you can write your own client against it.
• It checks in with GitHub periodically and this beta build is time-limited — when the beta ends it stops and tells you so. No user data leaves your machine; it's a visibility check on one repo, nothing else.
• You'll need the SoapySDR module for your radio installed.

Link: https://github.com/wonderingStars/sdrlink-beta

there is a step by step on how to isntall everything

Bug reports, "it doesn't see my dongle", and blunt feedback all welcome. Especially the blunt kind.