Software Defined Radio

airspy

airspy provides the tools for Airspy receivers (the R2, Mini, and HF+ family). Airspy sits above the RTL dongles in quality: better dynamic range and cleaner reception, which matters when you’re trying to pull a weak signal out of a noisy band. They’re receive-only, so this is a listening tool, not a transmitter.

Official-repo package; Security → Software Defined Radio → airspy. It ships airspy_info (device check), airspy_rx (capture), and a set of hardware utilities for the onboard GPIO and clock.

The help it prints

airspy_info reports the connected device:

airspy_info: invalid option -- '-'
unknown argument '-? (null)'
Usage:
	[-s serial_number_64bits]: Open board with specified 64bits serial number.

airspy_rx captures samples:

airspy_rx: invalid option -- '-'
unknown argument '-? (null)'
airspy_rx v1.0.5 23 April 2016
Usage:
-r <filename>: Receive data into file
-w Receive data into file with WAV header and automatic name
 This is for SDR# compatibility and may not work with other software
[-s serial_number_64bits]: Open device with specified 64bits serial number
[-p packing]: Set packing for samples, 
 1=enabled(12bits packed), 0=disabled(default 16bits not packed)
[-f frequency_MHz]: Set frequency in MHz between [24, 1900] (default 900MHz)
[-a sample_rate]: Set sample rate
[-t sample_type]: Set sample type, 
 0=FLOAT32_IQ, 1=FLOAT32_REAL, 2=INT16_IQ(default), 3=INT16_REAL, 4=U16_REAL, 5=RAW
[-b biast]: Set Bias Tee, 1=enabled, 0=disabled(default)
[-v vga_gain]: Set VGA/IF gain, 0-15 (default 5)
[-m mixer_gain]: Set Mixer gain, 0-15 (default 5)
[-l lna_gain]: Set LNA gain, 0-14 (default 1)
[-g linearity_gain]: Set linearity simplified gain, 0-21
[-h sensivity_gain]: Set sensitivity simplified gain, 0-21
[-n num_samples]: Number of samples to transfer (default is unlimited)
[-d]: Verbose mode

Examples

# Confirm the device
airspy_info

# Capture at 100 MHz to a file, 16-bit samples
airspy_rx -f 100 -a 3000000 -t 2 -r capture.iq

# Set gain and record for a fixed number of samples
airspy_rx -f 433.92 -g 15 -n 10000000 -r capture.iq

Most day-to-day use is through a graphical receiver like gqrx or sdrangel, which drive the Airspy for you — these utilities are for scripting and verification.