QSpectrumAnalyzer 2.1.0

Universal SDR backends

• soapy_power (https://github.com/xmikos/soapy_power)

soapy_power is default recommended universal backend in QSpectrumAnalyzer. It is based on SoapySDR and supports nearly all SDR platforms (RTL-SDR, HackRF, Airspy, SDRplay, LimeSDR, bladeRF, USRP and some other SDR devices).

• rx_power (https://github.com/rxseger/rx_tools)

rx_power (part of rx_tools) is also based on SoapySDR and therefore supports nearly all SDR platforms, but it is much slower than soapy_power, doesn’t support near real-time continuous measurement (minimum interval is 1 second, same as rtl_power) and is little buggy.

RTL-SDR backends

• rtl_power (https://github.com/keenerd/rtl-sdr)

You should use Keenerds fork of rtl-sdr (latest Git revision), because rtl_power in original rtl-sdr package (from osmocom.org) is broken (especially when used with cropping).

• rtl_power_fftw (https://github.com/AD-Vega/rtl-power-fftw)

Another alternative for RTL-SDR is rtl_power_fftw which has various benefits over rtl_power. E.g. better FFT performance (thanks to use of fftw library) and possibility to use much shorter acquisition time for more real-time continuous measurement (minimum interval in original rtl_power is 1 second, but in rtl_power_fftw you are only limited by number of frequency hops).

HackRF backends

• hackrf_sweep (https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf)

hackrf_sweep backend enables wideband spectrum monitoring by rapidly retuning the radio without requiring individual tuning requests from the host computer. This allows unprecedented sweep rate of 8 GHz per second.

Arch Linux:

Stable version:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/qspectrumanalyzer.git
cd qspectrumanalyzer
makepkg -sri

Git master branch:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/qspectrumanalyzer-git.git
cd qspectrumanalyzer-git
makepkg -sri

Or simply use pacaur (or any other AUR helper) which will also automatically install all QSpectrumAnalyzer dependencies:

pacaur -S qspectrumanalyzer
pacaur -S qspectrumanalyzer-git

Ubuntu:

# Add SoapySDR PPA to your system
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:myriadrf/drivers

# Update list of packages
sudo apt-get update

# Install basic dependencies
sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-pyqt5 python3-numpy python3-scipy soapysdr python3-soapysdr

# Install SoapySDR drivers for your hardware (e.g. RTL-SDR, Airspy, HackRF, LimeSDR, etc.)
sudo apt-get install soapysdr-module-rtlsdr soapysdr-module-airspy soapysdr-module-hackrf soapysdr-module-lms7

# Install QSpectrumAnalyzer
sudo pip3 install qspectrumanalyzer

Warning! pip will install packages system-wide by default, but you should always use your distribution package manager for this.

You can install it locally only for your current user by running this (without sudo):

pip3 install --user qspectrumanalyzer

Executables will be then placed in ~/.local/bin directory, you can add it to your PATH in ~/.bashrc.

If you want to install QSpectrumAnalyzer directly from Git master branch, you can use this procedure:

git clone https://github.com/xmikos/qspectrumanalyzer.git
cd qspectrumanalyzer
pip3 install --user .