SDRPi - SDR Station Ansible Setup

This project provides an Ansible playbook for setting up and configuring an SDR (Software Defined Radio) station on a Raspberry Pi running Debian-based 64-bit OS (ARM architecture).

Features

• Automated system updates and package upgrades
• Unattended updates configuration
• SSH key management with allow/block lists
• NTP synchronization using Chrony
• User creation and management
• Secure SSH configuration (password authentication disabled)
• RTL-SDR driver installation from source
• SDR++ (SDRPlusPlus) installation and setup
• SDR++ server systemd service configuration

Prerequisites

• Ansible installed on your control machine
• SSH access to the target host
• Target host: Raspberry Pi running Debian-based 64-bit OS (ARM64)

Setup

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd sdr-station

2. Configure your inventory in inventory.ini:

   [sdr-station]
   your-host-ip ansible_user=your-user ansible_become=yes
   

3. Set up SSH keys in the keys/ directory:

   • Add authorized public keys to keys/allowed.pub (one per line)
   • Add keys to block to keys/blocked.pub (one per line)

Usage

Run the main playbook:

ansible-playbook --ask-become-pass -i inventory.ini playbook.yaml

This will execute the complete SDR station setup including:

• System updates and basic configuration
• RTL-SDR driver installation
• SDR++ installation and server setup
• Systemd service configuration for SDR++ server

RTL-SDR Hardware Setup

The playbook automatically installs RTL-SDR drivers from source. For RTL-SDR V4 dongles or manual installation, refer to the official guide: RTL-SDR V4 Driver Installation

SDR++ Server

After running the playbook, SDR++ will be running as a systemd service on the target host. The server listens on port 5259 by default.

Connecting to SDR++ Server

1. Install SDR++ on your local machine from https://github.com/AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus

2. Launch SDR++ locally

3. In SDR++:

   • Go to the "Source" menu
   • Select "SDR++ Server"
   • Enter the IP address of your SDR station and port 5259
   • Connect to the server
   • Once connected, select your SDR device from the available sources

The SDR++ server allows you to control the SDR hardware remotely while running the processing on your local machine.

Project Structure

• playbook.yaml - Main Ansible playbook with SDR++ setup
• basic-setup.yaml - Basic system setup tasks (SSH, NTP, unattended updates)
• rtl-sdr-install.yaml - RTL-SDR driver installation tasks
• inventory.ini - Ansible inventory file
• keys/ - SSH key management directory
• utils/ - Utility playbooks and tasks
• .devcontainer/ - Development container configuration

Development

This project includes a dev container configuration for VS Code. Open in VS Code with the Dev Containers extension for a ready-to-use Ansible development environment.