How to listen to CB Radio with a cheap SDR on your PC

all right here we've got the RTL SDR adapter we're going to be attaching it to our antenna cable here this is uh an SMA female connection on this end this is an SMA mail on this I've got a PL 259 or so239 bringing it down from the the CB Standard CB antenna cable there down to the SMA I recommend getting a few just kind of different kinds and and all we're going to do then is plug this guy into the laptop desktop whatever you got this device gets warm if you've got a fan some type of way to get air to it a number of different ways but the cooler it is the better it's going to work you also don't want to have like this kind of cable hanging off the back of a PC pulling down Weight Wise any direction so you can hear there just disconnected from the from the computer so you want to make sure that it stays in nice and Straight Like That now that we've got the SDR USB device plugged in we need to install drivers for it I've got a link in the description below that takes you to this but uh we're going to go ahead and we're going to download the drivers here all right so we want to go ahead once you go here just download or go down a little bit we want to close out any of the ads that pop up and then we're going to want to go to the downloads folder here and what you're going to want to do is once this particular application opens go up to the options and list all devices um and then you'll have all your your USB devices that are here they were shown before but we're looking for the Balkan interface device zero and device one if you don't see your device there try going to list all devices and it may show up I'm going to go ahead and leave it on bulk device here current driver is set to none and we want to install the win USB six one don't select any of your other devices up here if you've already got one installed wrong drivers that's a whole separate issue but this is assuming you haven't installed one before you're going to click install driver here then this is going to sit and chug in the background it might take just a minute once this finishes installing we're going to download the um I like to use SDR plus plus um it's a freeware application that allows you to listen to any radio frequencies um you can definitely listen to anything outside the CB band or anything but this video is how to use the CB band with an inexpensive RTL SDR dongle um I've got this currently hooked up to my Mako v5000 outside we're going to download oh there we go the driver was installed successfully we're going to click close on that close this out and um what we're going to do next is we're going to go and download and again I've got the link for this um below it is not.com it's sdrpp.org for SDR plus plus sdrpp.org and we're going to go ahead and download the latest version the nightly build is the true true latest version those are all beta versions that are up updated constantly but you're going to need a GitHub account in order to get access to those downloads they can be a little bit buggy unless there's a feature you're looking for just stick with the regular download we're going to download this here uh 104 is the latest version we're going to scroll down a little bit here and we're going to look for the Windows File itself so SDR PP underscore Windows x64 we're going to download this guy and then we're going to go into our downloads folder and here we've got SDR PP it's a zip file it's actually multiple files within this so we're going to right click on it the first time we're going to just say extract all we're going to go ahead and extract out to this folder uncheck the show extracted click the extract button and this is just using the free built-in extracting software from Windows now that if we go into that folder there's now going to be another folder inside of there and this is our actual SDR application that's here what we're going to want to do before we do this also is I do have down in the description below too I've got a file shared out off Google Drive that you can download that's going to have all of the channels pre-programmed for the Standard CB band so I'm going to copy that we're going to come up here and we're going to paste this in and there's one one file inside of it we're going to click the download button here and then we're going to come back out to download so we're gonna that CBR channels Plus One band zip file we're going to right click on it also choose extract all hit extract and that just went within this folder here but we're going to come back in the SDR application that's here and what we're looking for is the sdrpp it's the only one with a blue icon and when you run it the first time it takes a little bit to run where it's initializing everything and I'm going to show you all of the settings that I do here whenever I set it up for um a new version after I apply an update or something so um over here on the left is where we have Source it's currently set to air spy that's not what we're going to want to use we're going to want to choose that drop down that's there and we're looking for the RTL SDR which is uh the USD USB device that we have plugged in it found that there's a generic RTL that's here and the default bandwidth is 2.4 megahertz meaning that it can see a lot of 2.4 or 1.2 megahertz below what you're listening to and 1.2 above you can see a lot um if you have anything that's noisy around you or any loud stations that can be bad um I typically drop this down to 1.02 I find that this works a little bit better for me I can still see the entire CB band in in one one view there and I'll show you that as well here um but what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and just click play on this up at the top which is going to start it's going to be loud too um I'm gonna go ahead and bring the volume down a little bit here and we I guess we can leave it up um and right now it's set to 100 megahertz that's not where we want to be and if you click up and down on the um the top or the bottom of the numbers it'll go up or down um so we're going to go ahead and do to Channel 27 here and you can see it it already has the CB band and we can see we're getting some traffic uh listed inside of here as well um so we're we're getting data in but how do we make it where we can see it how can we use it all of that good stuff um over here you can adjust the gain on the RTL as well and I can bring that gain up and you can see it getting getting getting stronger there I typically will leave that down but what I'm going to do here is I'm going to bring and and go ahead and check the RTL automatic gain control and I typically check the IQ correction box as well I get some electrical noise where I'm located and this seems to help knock some of that out um down here under the radio section this is where you're going to choose whether it's narrow FM wide FM AM upper sideband lower sideband Etc we're going to go ahead and click am but the next number that's down here is bandwidth and it's set to 12 500. that's not what we want for CB we want 6 000 and you can just type that in if you want to and that's going to go ahead and get that in if you look over here though everything is just completely blown out really bright this is our zoom level up here on the top right I can zoom in or zoom out on a particular frequency by grabbing that blue bar and sliding in or out um this Brink raises or lowers whatever the top um the ceiling is of your signal gain so up here at zero if I zoom this in you can see it's it's lowering whatever the ceiling is and then this is um more like your your gain itself that you've got on your on what you're viewing we're just going to leave that there for now I'm actually going to probably bring this down to about here and I'm going to bring this guy up a little bit here as well so if we do some of the more of the settings that we've got here um I currently have it muted I click the little speaker icon and muted it there but again you can see the red shows the CB band but then all our channels aren't there that file and the Google Drive Link uh I've got that um if you click add you can add individual channels whatever you want but if you click the import button and then we're going to go back to our downloads folder and then there's that one file that I had there called the CB channels Plus One band if we go into there and then we've got the CB channels Plus One band there and open it all these yellow lines just appeared across there this shows all 40 channels in the CB band plus one as well and what above what I typically do when I come into this is I'll click on Channel 20. or Channel 19 Channel 19 is going to center it up for just the CB band and then this Zooms in and if I zoom in slowly as I start to get in here you'll see that it's going to stop if I can get it to do it just right where channel one is up here on the top left and channel 40 is up here on the top right so I'm viewing all 40 channels at once here on the on the CB band all right um all right so um once we've got the channels imported here and uh and we're looking um one of the other things I like to do is um if we scroll down on the left side here a little bit um we want to come down and one of the things that I typically like to do is up J update my fft framework I like it at 30. um the waterfall moves a little bit faster I like to do the fft window I like to keep that um set like it is at black man but under color map I don't like the classic one there's a few different ones that I do use but it really just depends on um what I'm doing here but recently I've been using Inferno so I'm going to go ahead and click over to Inferno here and you can see we've got a lot of activity on 30 right now I'm down here in South Carolina and the local roll call and prayer request just happened and so let's listen in on 30. I'm actually gonna go ahead and uh bring my floor up a little bit here I like it probably right about this setting right here and then when somebody Keys up we can really see that I'm actually going to bring this down a touch and bring the key up just a little bit more I like kind of a general light purple down here in the bottom and then when somebody really keys I hear it so I've got it muted right now I'm going to go ahead and unmute we'll be able to hear what's going on right now being I clicked on the 30 up at the Top If I click on any one of these channels I can listen to them so I'm going to click on 30 here and unmute are you friends thank you more did you get in there with somebody else calling your name you can see we're uh listening to that there we got lots of audio coming in but uh we can see all 40 channels here and you can see somebody was keying on channel 25 here looks like they had some decent power there's always noise coming out of six um Sometimes some of the big boys coming out of six or nine will drown out everything that you can hear on any of the channels um there's a few guys here locally that just splatter all over when they key up on six uh even if I'm on my radio I'm not going to hear anything when they do I'm gonna click on 25 here but ain't no telling where we go back to 30 to go on the floor across there oh and Michael let me try that one again so you can see we're listening to channel 30 there it's so easy when you're sitting here looking you can see all 40 channels at a glance but we'll run through and just look at any of the other settings that I typically change when I make these when I make settings here sometimes I'll up the sound quality um from 4 800 and I'll go to 9600 here or 96 000 rather um but if you wanted to add any of the additional sources if you're running an SDR that's not listed here you can add all of those I might do another video showing all of that I like the dark theme I like it to look the the dark colors here not as bright if you want to edit any of these one thing I do want to say all the channels that I have saved channels 1 through 34 um all default to am 6000 bandwidth if you look just uh just to the right of where the mouse cursor is there on Channel 34 it'll tell you all of that information if I go up to 35 I've got all the presets that were saved here for channels 35 through 40 to use lower sideband as typically that those are more of the Lower Side Band skip channels that are out there you can change any of that that you want to you can come over here to the under frequency manager and change anything that you want so if you want channel 35 instead of being Lower Side Band if you click the edit button here you can then choose and it's bandwidth is set to 3000 for Lower Side Band or upper side band and you can change it to am or whatever you wanted to do there but if you go to am you're going to want to make sure your bandwidth is set to six thousand not three thousand um but uh if we come back into channel 30 here um once I click on 30 it goes back to the uh next one let's go country and more big country coming back foreign [Music] but again if you want to switch to any of these channels if you see a line like I'm seeing a line right here I got somebody really faint on channel 24 there I'm not going to be able to get them not going to be able to hear that one but again if I go back to 25 that person that's randomly talked in there I'm gonna hear that I hear somebody here on 28. what's up hey what's up Grandma dirty again somebody on 25 easily pop around um there are guys that talk on evenings and everything all the time and they'll key up audio a few times seeing if anyone's on a particular Channel and if you're using an SDR like this you can look at it and see and then respond to that particular person when I first got this going I used one of those a b antenna switchers and would switch between my software-defined radio and my radio radio and that way I can switch where my antenna was going there's some more advanced things you can do as well I'll probably do another video showing how to use what's called a pan adapter but you can see we got somebody keying up on six here that's just killing us um I'm curious what we see if we uh unmute here over here there you go somebody at 30 minutes on South Carolina that's why but you can see the band was only on the bottom side of the channel where all of these are modulating up and down above the channel I can tell that was lower sideband and again all of the presets in that file that I have there for channels 35 through 40 are going to be lower making a good trip out here in the beach in southern California to South Carolina and it doesn't look like there's any skip conditions right now either normally this is completely lit up here one other thing I do want to add if you click you can close any of these particular ones that are here you're not going to use a lot of these once you kind of get them set play with any of the settings if you want to um but I typically close most of these out it kind of cleans up the look I leave the source open so that I can see this and I usually leave the radio one open here as well um but that way kind is a little bit of a cleaner of a look and I'll just mute and unmute by clicking that right there turn down on six here just one two usually it's multiple guys keying up trying to yell over each other all the time um and I don't spend much time down on six so we got it up here on 30 right now a lot of activity on 30. I know the 27 looks like there's something there that big on now come back [Music] we have you in there sit and listen and uh the higher you get your antenna the better it's going to sound when I first got my SDR installed I had a just an old 102 whip I had it mounted on a two by four sticking about six feet above my rear fence which was a six foot fence I had about 12 feet off the ground um just mounted on a 2x4 um out back and uh and I could sit and listen to these guys I couldn't talk back without a radio but you can hear a lot that's going on and I'm really surprised how much there is going on out there on the CB Band still but you can see here's your whole band and you can see what's going on so um real easy to take part in any of the conversations that might be going on so hopefully you guys found this helpful hopefully this can get you uh getting to listen to CB on your radio I'll probably do another video here showing how to set up the a b switch if you want to look at that along with um I run an mfj pan adapter where it splits off the receive signal automatically to my SDR so I can listen through the computer and if I key the mic on my radio it automatically cuts that receive off on the SDR and starts broadcasting out through the antenna on the radio so I'll show you guys how I've got that set up and uh and and how that works as well but uh for a free piece of software free set of drivers and a very inexpensive USB device you can listen to CB radio through your computer here and it really does work well so hopefully you guys found this helpful okay here's my antenna setup I've got a Roan telescoping mast it's up about 30 feet right now LMR 400 run outside here it's a bailing up there at the base of the antenna 11 turns at about nine and a half inches diameter it's about 22 feet of cable um ugly bailing up there knocked out all of the um RF noise coming back down the cable um very clean clean transmission with that so um helped knock SWR down too but Mako v5000 um got it tuned um tuned for the the CB band uh tuned a little higher it's tuned I believe around channel 24 28 somewhere I did it a touch higher though I tend to talk on the on the higher frequencies more than the lower but then also it comes in I've got it grounded here I've got an eight foot ground rod coax comes around here sealed Nema box here and uh that gives me my so239 connector on the other side of the wall inside

Channel: MegaMind

Views: 41,015

Keywords: RTLSDR, RTL SDR, SDR++, SDR Plus Plus, CB Radio on PC

Id: UCwnC8eZ674

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 30 2022