User Manual
The sdrtrunk user's manual is documented across several wiki pages that are accessible from the sidebar menu displayed alongside each wiki page. This user's manual overview wiki page details high-level concepts and themes and then directs the reader to the appropriate wiki page that details how to use the sdrtrunk application feature.
The Getting Started wiki details the steps that you need to complete to initially setup the software and related SDR and tuner hardware devices.
The radio frequency spectrum is very wide and diverse and it can be challenging for new users to figure out where in the radio frequency spectrum they can find signals to decode and listen to audio. Software Defined Radios (SDR) can tune into most of these frequency bands across the spectrum. However, the sdrtrunk application is designed to work with a small subset of these radio bands, primarily the AM and FM bands and the commercial and trunked radio bands.
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Radio Reference - the radio reference website provides crowd-sourced observations and government-published details about radio systems and users around the world. sdrtrunk's Playlist Editor includes a plugin to browse and select radio channels and automatically setup channel configurations to to tune and decode the channels so that you can listen to audio. You need a Premium Subscription to access the radio reference database from sdrtrunk's playlist editor.
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RTL-SDR.com - this website is geared to the SDR hobby but also includes blog entries and a Signal ID wiki to help you visually identify signals you may see in the radio spectrum.
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Other Websites/Social Media - there are many social media and local and regional websites that contain details on radio systems and signals that you may encounter when using sdrtrunk and other SDR applications.
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Just Start Exploring - sdrtrunk allows you to manual tune and view the radio spectrum around you and then you can select radio channel frequencies to decode.
The playlist editor is the central tool for configuring the sdrtrunk application to decode radio signals. sdrtrunk uses the concept of playlists to organize channels and aliases. The Playlist Editor wiki contains information to help you understand how to configure channels, decoders and aliases.
sdrtrunk uses SDRs/Tuners to select individual radio channels for decoding. SDRs can tune/receive a wide chunk of radio spectrum that contains many individual radio channels. Unlike a traditional radio scanner, sdrtrunk can tune and decode all radio channels that are present in this wide tuner spectrum provided by the SDR, at the same time.
sdrtrunk can also record the wide frequency spectrum from SDRs and then mount the wide radio band recording as an offline tuner for decoding individual channels from the recording.
See the Tuners wiki page for details on
sdrtrunk uses channel configurations to pull together all of the elements that are needed to decode a radio channel, including radio frequency, protocol decoder, logging and audio recording and streaming. The Playlist Editor wiki details playlists and channels and how to configure channels to start decoding.
sdrtrunk includes a number of different radio protocol decoders. You can select from several primary radio protocol and additional secondary radio protocol decoders in each Channel configuration. A primary protocol decoder is one that decodes teh primary signaling on a digital radio protocol channel. Secondary decoders work with analog (FM) radio channels that employ short digital bursts for Automatic Number Identificaton (ANI) and GPS position reporting and other auxiliary radio reporting tasks.
Radio protocol decoders are specified for each Channel configuration. The Playlist Editor wiki details playlists and channel configurations and how to select decoders for your channel(s).
Modern radio protocols use radio and talkgroup identifiers, IP addresses and other numeric values to identify the many entities involved in radio communication. sdrtrunk provides a rich mechanism for attaching labels to these identifiers so that you don't have to memorize all of these number values.
However, aliases are much more than simple label substitutions that help you to easily identify radio entities. Aliases also control everything that you want to do with the activities and call audio that is associated with each of these aliases. Aliases are a foundational aspect of the way that sdrtrunk manages the decoded activies and audio from radio channels and it's important for you understand Aliases and how to use them so that you can realize the maximum value from the software.
See the Playlist Editor wiki for information on using and configuring aliases.
The User Preferences wiki describes how to setup your computer for audio playback and listening to audio produced by each of the decoding channels.
Playback and muting of audio produced by each decoding channel is controlled by Aliases. See the Playlist Editor wiki for details on how to configure Aliases to control the playback and muting of radio audio.
Recording of audio produced by each decoding channel is controlled by Aliases. See the Playlist Editor wiki for details on how to configure Aliases to control recording of call audio. Additionally, the playlist editor wiki provides details on how to setup logging and recording of messages, events, and baseband sample data produced by the channel decoders.
Streaming of audio produced by each decoding channel is controlled by Aliases. See the Playlist Editor wiki for details on how to configure Aliases to control streaming of call audio.