rtl_biast(1)

📦
version 2.0.3 · 2 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ NAME ✨

rtl_biast — a tool for turning the bias tee or any GPIO on and off 🎀

And for the record, the header up top is rtl_biast(1), living its best life in the User Commands section of the manual. Slay. 💅

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

rtl_biast [OPTIONS]

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

Okay so bestie, real talk: this entire program exists to switch the bias tee power supply of an RTL2832 based receiver on or off. That's the job. On. Off. Iconic. ✨

And why would you even want that? Because so many receivers ship with a bias tee that feeds DC power out over the antenna connector — for example to supply an external low noise amplifier or an active antenna. One cable, power + signal, no extra chaos. We love a two-for-one. 🔌

On the RTL2832 the bias tee is driven by GPIO 0. But here's the tea 👑 — if your receiver wires it to a different pin, or if it exposes further GPIOs, you can control all of that with the -g option. Flexible. Empowering. Main character energy.

⚠️ Now THIS part, I need you to actually read it: the setting is not reset when rtl_biast exits. The bias tee stays in exactly the state it was left in until it's switched off again — either by another call to rtl_biast, or by a client program that disables it explicitly. It does NOT clean up after itself when it leaves. Periodt. 💀

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • -d device_index or serial (default: 0) — tells it which device you're talking to, either by index or by serial. Default is 0, aka the first one, aka the default bestie.
  • -b bias_on (default: 0) — the on/off switch itself. Default is 0.
  • -g GPIO select (default: 0) — picks which GPIO you're driving. Default is 0.

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

Wanna turn the bias tee of the first device on? Say less:

rtl_biast -d 0 -b 1

Wanna turn it back off? Also say less:

rtl_biast -d 0 -b 0

Wanna switch GPIO 1 instead of the bias tee? You already know:

rtl_biast -d 0 -g 1 -b 1

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

The full RTL-SDR wiki documentation lore lives here: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

And the rest of the rtl-sdr squad 👯 (they're all in the 1 section, obviously):

👑 AUTHOR 👑

This manual page was written for the osmocom rtl-sdr project. Shoutout to them, fr fr. 🫶

Copyright (c) 2012 Steve Markgraf <steve@steve-m.de> 🌈

So the legal tea ☕, because we respect the paperwork in this house:

This program is free software — you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Your pick, both valid, no wrong answers. 💅

It's distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY — like literally none, not even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

And that's the whole page!! ✨ This one is straight from the RTL-SDR project, version 2.0.3, bestie — go flip that bias tee and stay iconic. Byeee 💖🦋🎀

📦 where this page comes from