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SimTX Guide/Receiving

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The Receive tab starts a receiver on the server and passes its signal to an SDR program on your computer through a bridge. The setup is on the left; the Bridges list is on the right.

Receive a signal[edit | edit source]

Receive tab with My station selected, Receive at Demo hilltop, the Roof Yagi antenna and its rotator, center frequency 14.2 MHz, sample rate 250000, and a running bridge Hilltop 20 m on 127.0.0.1:1234.
The Receive tab receiving at Demo hilltop, with one bridge running.
  1. Under Where you listen, choose where the receiver is.
  2. Under Tuning, set the Center frequency and the Sample rate (Hz).
  3. Press Start RX.
  4. In your SDR program, connect an rtl_tcp source to the address shown under Bridge, by default 127.0.0.1:1234.

How to receive shows the settings in SDR++, and the SDR Console guide in SDR Console.

Where you listen[edit | edit source]

Choice Receiver Needs
My station One of your stations: choose it under Receive at, with its Antenna and Radio. Sign-in
Public station Another account's public station. Search under Find a public station and select it. The session uses the station's main antenna. Sign-in
Ad-hoc Any location, with a Callsign and Antenna of your own. Nothing

For Ad-hoc, type the Latitude and Longitude or press Pick location on map. Antenna details sets the antenna's length, Height (m), Azimuth (°) and Feedline loss (dB).

Receive here in a station's details in the Stations tab chooses that station. On your own station, Track a satellite and the Rotator work as for transmitting; see Rotators and tracking.

Tuning[edit | edit source]

Field Meaning
Center frequency The middle of the band you receive.
Sample rate (Hz) The width of the band, in samples per second. 250,000 suits shortwave; FM broadcast needs about 1,024,000 or more.

Tune RX next to a transmission in a station's details sets the center frequency to it.

Bridge[edit | edit source]

Field Meaning
Label A name for the bridge in the Bridges list.
Listen address Where your SDR program connects. 127.0.0.1 is this computer only. 0.0.0.0 lets other computers on your network connect, and anyone there can retune it.
rtl_tcp port The port your SDR program connects to. Default 1234.
Hardware profile The RTL-SDR model the bridge presents to your SDR program. Default Generic R820T.
Timestamped role Adds a timestamp to each block of samples. Your SDR program gets the same samples.
Digital AGC Starts the bridge with digital automatic gain control. On by default.

Link resilience[edit | edit source]

Smooth over network dropouts adds a jitter buffer, retries and concealment of short dropouts. It is on by default. Advanced tuning sets:

Field Default
Read timeout (ms) 5000
Max retries 3, or -1 for no limit
Retry base delay (ms) 250
Jitter buffer (ms) 150, or -1 for off
Narrow upstream on repeated stalls Lowers the sample rate when the link keeps stalling.

Bridges[edit | edit source]

Bridges list with one bridge, Hilltop 20 m, Running, 14.2000 MHz, 250.00 kS/s, 127.0.0.1:1234, on Demo hilltop with the Roof Yagi, and a Stop button.
A running bridge in the Bridges list, with the address for the SDR program.

Each Start RX adds a bridge to the list, with its frequency, sample rate, address and state: Starting, Running, or ended. A line of link figures appears after trouble: reconnects, underruns, concealed blocks, narrowing and dropped blocks.

  • Stop ends one bridge, Stop all every bridge after you confirm.
  • Clear finished removes ended bridges.

Presets[edit | edit source]

Presets at the top saves and loads complete receive setups, the same way as on the Transmit tab.