rtl_tcp(1)

💖 rtl_tcp — the manual page, but make it a group chat 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're reading the rtl_tcp page from section 1 of the manual — you know, the User Commands girlies. this is literally the whole thing, nothing skipped, nothing filtered. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

rtl_tcp — an I/Q spectrum server for RTL2832 based DVB-T receivers 🦋

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So the whole vibe is this: you take a DVB-T receiver that's been re-purposed as a software defined radio, and it receives and sends I/Q data over a TCP network to some other demodulation, decoding or logging application. iconic behavior, no cap. it was written for — and incorporated into — the osmocom rtl-sdr project.

Now, there's so much software out there for the RTL2832. most of the user-level packages lean on the librtlsdr library, which ships as part of the rtl-sdr codebase. and that codebase has the library itself plus a bunch of command line tools like rtl_test, rtl_sdr, rtl_tcp, and rtl_fm. these tools use the library to check whether RTL2832 devices even exist, and to do basic data transfer stuff to and from the device. periodt.

and because most RTL2832 devices plug in over USB, the librtlsdr library depends on the libusb library to talk to the device. it's giving teamwork. 🤝

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🎀 USAGE 🎀

run this program on a machine that has an rtl-sdr supported device connected, and it will serve I/Q data to other applications over TCP/IP. that's it, that's the whole thing. 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

rtl_tcp [OPTIONS]

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

one bullet per flag, bestie, we are NOT skipping any:

• -a — listen address
• -p — listen port (default: 1234)
• -f — frequency to tune to [Hz]
• -g — gain (default: 0 for auto)
• -s — samplerate in Hz (default: 2048000 Hz)
• -b — number of buffers (default: 32, set by library)
• -n — max number of linked list buffers to keep (default: 500)
• -d — device_index (default: 0)
• -P — ppm_error (default: 0)

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🌈 Example: 🌈

here's the glow-up, in all its glory:

rtl_tcp -a 10.0.0.2 [-p listen port (default: 1234)]
        Found 1 device(s).
        Found Elonics E4000 tuner
        Using Generic RTL2832U (e.g. hama nano)
        Tuned to 100000000 Hz.
        listening...

Use the device argument rtl_tcp=10.0.0.2:1234 in the OsmoSDR (gr-osmosdr) source to receive samples in GRC and control rtl_tcp parameters (frequency, gain, ...). yes, you control it remotely. main character energy fr fr.

use the rtl_tcp=... device argument in the gr-osmosdr source to receive the samples in GRC and control the rtl settings remotely. (same energy, said twice, because it's important 💜)

This application has been successfully crosscompiled for ARM and MIPS devices and is providing IQ data in a networked ADS-B setup at a rate of 2.4MSps. The gr-osmosdr source is being used together with an optimized gr-air-modes version (see Known Apps below). It is also available as a package in OpenWRT. she's versatile, she contains multitudes ✨

A use case is described at https://sites.google.com/site/embrtlsdr/

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💀 SEE ALSO 💀

• gnuradio(1)
• RTL-SDR wiki documentation: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
• Other rtl-sdr programs:
  • rtl_adsb(1), rtl_eeprom(1), rtl_fm(1), rtl_sdr(1), rtl_test(1)

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🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

This manual page was written by Maitland Bottoms for the Debian project (but may be used by others). we love a generous queen 🎀

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⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

Copyright (c) 2013 A. Maitland Bottoms <bottoms@debian.org>

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.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

bestie this is the real legal text and it is NOT a vibe, it is a promise — no warranty, none, zero, don't come for her if your tuner acts up 🙈

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and that's the whole page, nothing left out, every single flag and footnote accounted for 💅 this was RTL-SDR version 0.5.0 of the rtl_tcp manual page, straight from the RTL-SDR source — mwah, slay, go tune something, ily, bye 🦋💖🎀