dustcouncil/bandsaunter
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

Initial commit: bandsaunter, an RTL-SDR signal scanner

Browse source 
Sweeps any set of frequency ranges, records what it finds, and works out
what kind of signal it was.

- Frequency ranges entered by hand or picked from a 135-entry US band plan,
  including whole-band and all-CW sweeps that resolve the demodulator per
  segment.
- Detection calibrated against the peak-hold detector's own noise statistics,
  so the threshold means real margin over static rather than over the floor.
- A content gate: captures are kept only if they carry voice, decodable CW,
  or an identified digital keying scheme. Speech is recognised by a pitch
  track that drifts, which static cannot imitate.
- Identification of NFM/WFM/AM/SSB, CW with Morse decoded to text, P25, DMR,
  NXDN, D-STAR, POCSAG, FLEX, ACARS, AIS, APRS, n-FSK and n-PSK.
- Gapless streaming capture, with the signal path fast enough to keep up in
  real time, so recordings play back at the right speed.
- Optional one-file-per-frequency recording with spoken timestamps, and
  speech-to-text transcription.
- Menus and command line generated from one settings table, so neither can
  offer something the other cannot; settings persist in ~/.config.

367 tests, run against synthetic signals, a built-in receiver simulator, and
real hardware.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
The Dust Council 2026-08-21 20:50:20 -07:00
commit db3e0c79b9
39 changed files with 13473 additions and 0 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

723
README.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,723 @@
# bandsaunter
A signal scanner, recorder and identifier for RTL-SDR receivers.
Give it any number of frequency ranges — typed in by hand or picked from a
built-in US band plan — and it sweeps them, stops on anything above the noise
floor, records it, and works out what kind of signal it was. CW/Morse is
decoded to text.
```
╭──────────────────────────────── receiver ────────────────────────────────╮
│ Rafael Micro R820T/R820T2 2.048 MS/s gain auto +0 ppm │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭───────────────────────────────── sweep ──────────────────────────────────╮
│ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ step 4/6 146 MHz - 146.666667 MHz │
│ ▆ █ ▄▄▄ peak -18.0 dBFS │
│ recording cycle 2 hits 3 dropped 0 detections 7 up 0:04 │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ REC 146.52 MHz [nfm] ███████████░░░░░░░░░ 11.4/30s SIGNAL SNR 27 dB │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭───────────────────────────── recorded signals ───────────────────────────╮
│ 19:38:43 460.025 MHz 8.2s 27.0 P25 Phase 1 C4FM digital voice │
│ 19:38:43 144.1 MHz 8.2s 27.0 CW / Morse at 18 WPM "VVV DE…" │
│ 19:38:43 146.52 MHz 8.2s 27.0 Narrowband FM voice (CTCSS 100) │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
```
## Install
```bash
sudo apt install rtl-sdr librtlsdr0 espeak-ng # Debian/Ubuntu
pip install -e .
```
### Dependencies
| | Package | Needed for |
|---|---|---|
| **required** | `librtlsdr0` (`rtl-sdr`) | talking to the dongle at all |
| **required** | `numpy`, `scipy` | all signal processing |
| **required** | `rich` | the menus and the live display |
| **required** | `PyYAML` | the settings file and profiles |
| *recommended* | `espeak-ng` | clearer spoken timestamps |
| *optional* | `faster-whisper` (pip) | transcribing speech to text |
`espeak-ng` is a **recommendation, not a requirement**: without it the spoken
timestamps are produced by a built-in formant synthesiser, so the feature
works on a machine with nothing else installed. With it they are clearer and
render about three times faster. Any of `espeak`, `pico2wave`, `flite` or
macOS `say` is used if found instead.
For a Debian package that maps to `Depends: librtlsdr0, python3-numpy,
python3-scipy, python3-rich, python3-yaml`, `Recommends: espeak-ng,
rtl-sdr` and `Suggests: python3-vosk` — transcription is off by default and
the scan reports it plainly when no recogniser is installed. `rtl-sdr` itself only supplies command-line tools bandsaunter does not
call — the library is what matters.
`bandsaunter scan --combine --dry-run` reports which engine will be used.
If the dongle is not accessible, the DVB-T kernel driver has usually claimed
it:
```bash
echo 'blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rtl.conf
sudo rmmod dvb_usb_rtl28xxu
```
Check with `bandsaunter devices --test`.
## Quick start
```bash
bandsaunter # the menus: set up and scan
bandsaunter scan -b 2m -b marine-vhf # band-plan presets
bandsaunter scan -r 144M-148M -r 420M-450M # your own ranges
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --simulate # try it without hardware
```
## Two ways to drive it
Everything is available both ways. Run `bandsaunter` with no arguments for the
menus, or pass flags for scripting — the two are generated from the same
table of settings, so neither can offer something the other cannot.
```
1 Frequency ranges 3 configured
2 Band plan 107 US presets
3 Settings record no limit, hang 6s, squelch +12 dB, keep voice, cw
4 Saved settings and profiles
h Help
s Start scanning
q Quit
```
Settings are grouped, show their current value against the built-in default,
and carry their own help:
```
# setting value what it does
1 Record for * no limit longest one signal may hold the receiver
2 Wait for quiet * 6 s quiet time before the sweep resumes
3 Absolute limit 900 s ceiling on one capture, even when 'Record for' is 0
* differs from the built-in default
Number to change it, ?N for help on one, d to reset the group, blank to go back.
```
`?2` explains a setting in full, including the command-line flag that does the
same thing. Typing a search term instead of a number finds settings by any
word in their name or description — `voice score` finds the speech threshold.
Values may be typed with their units: `5 s`, `2.048 MHz`, `12 dB`, `48k`, or
`no limit` for the settings that accept 0.
## Settings that persist
Settings are saved to `~/.config/bandsaunter/config.yaml` and picked up by every
later run. Save them from the menus (**4 → s**) or from the command line:
```bash
bandsaunter config # open the settings menu
bandsaunter config hang_seconds=6 record_seconds=0 # set and save directly
bandsaunter config --show # every setting, with defaults
bandsaunter config --describe hang_seconds # explain one in full
bandsaunter config --path # where the file lives
bandsaunter config --reset # back to defaults
```
Three layers apply in order, each overriding the last:
1. the saved settings file
2. a named profile, if `--profile` is given
3. any flags on the command line
So a saved squelch of 12 dB stays in force while `--hang 1.5` overrides just
the hang for one run. `--no-config` ignores the file entirely; `--save` stores
the resulting settings as the new default.
Named profiles live beside it in the same directory:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m -b 70cm --record 0 --hang 6 --save-profile local
bandsaunter scan -p local
bandsaunter profiles
```
## Entering frequencies
**By hand** — repeat `-r` as many times as you like; there is no limit on the
number of start/end pairs.
```bash
bandsaunter scan -r 144M-148M -r 462.5M-467.8M -r 929M-932M
```
A range is `start-end`, with optional `/step` and `@mode`:
| Form | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `144M-148M` | explicit start and end |
| `144-148M` | the unit carries over to the left end |
| `146.52M` | a single frequency |
| `144M-148M/25k` | with a channel step |
| `144M-148M/25k@nfm` | and a forced demodulator |
Units may be written `144M`, `144 MHz`, `144000k`, or plain Hz. A bare number
below 10000 is read as MHz, so `-r 162.4-162.55` does what you expect.
**From the US band plan** — 107 presets across 18 categories:
```bash
bandsaunter bands --categories # list categories
bandsaunter bands --category Aviation # everything in one category
bandsaunter bands pager # search
bandsaunter scan -b gmrs -b railroad -b noaa-weather
```
Each preset carries its own channel spacing, demodulator and bandwidth, so
`-b marine-vhf` scans 25 kHz channels in NFM while `-b fm-broadcast` uses
200 kHz WFM, without being told.
Each amateur band also has a **complete** entry that covers the whole band and
picks the demodulator per segment, because a band is not one mode:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m-complete
```
scans 144-148 MHz as CW below 144.1, SSB to 144.3 and FM above it, so a CW
beacon at the bottom is decoded to text while a repeater at the top is
demodulated as FM — in one sweep. There is one for every band from 160 m to
33 cm: `160m-complete`, `80m-complete`, ... `70cm-complete`, `33cm-complete`.
Where an amateur band overlaps another service the amateur reading wins inside
a complete-band sweep — 433 MHz is treated as 70 cm rather than as the ISM
band it shares — while scanning `-r 433.9M` on its own still treats it as ISM.
A few presets stand for a *set* of others, so scattered segments can be picked
in one go:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b all-cw --record 0 --hang 6
```
`all-cw` covers every CW allocation in the plan — 160, 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15,
12, 10, 6 and 2 metres — as eleven separate ranges rather than one span from
1.8 to 144 MHz. That is 1.25 MHz of spectrum in total, so a full pass takes
under a second and CW gets decoded to text as it turns up. Direct sampling
switches itself on for the HF segments and off again from 12 m upward; the HF
part needs an HF antenna to be worth anything.
The menus do both: browse the band plan by category, or type in start/end
pairs one after another. Ranges can be listed, removed, toggled on and off,
and have their demodulator changed from the ranges menu.
## The two dwell settings
These are the settings that decide how the scanner behaves when it finds
something:
| Setting | Flag | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Record for X seconds before continuing | `--record 30` | The longest a single signal may hold the receiver. `0` means stay as long as it keeps transmitting. |
| Wait for X seconds of no signal before continuing | `--hang 3` | How long the channel must stay quiet before the sweep resumes. **Gaps shorter than this are recorded straight through.** |
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --record 30 --hang 3
```
Whichever comes first wins, and that is worth being clear about: **`--record`
overrides `--hang`.** A transmission still in progress at the record limit is
cut off there, however long the hang time is. If a recording keeps ending at
exactly 30 seconds, that is the default record limit doing it, not the hang —
set `--record 0`. The scan reports it when this happens.
Both are measured in **samples**, not wall-clock time, so a 30 second setting
produces a 30.0 second recording.
Supporting settings:
- `--min-record 0.5` — discard anything shorter, so brief noise spikes leave
nothing behind on disk.
- `--revisit 8` — ignore a frequency for this long after recording it, so a
busy repeater does not monopolise the sweep.
- `--max-record 900` — absolute ceiling on one capture, applied even when
`--record` is 0.
- `--threshold 8` — squelch, in dB above the measured noise floor.
### Capturing both sides of a conversation
`--hang` is what holds a recording open across the natural pauses in two-way
traffic. Set it longer than the gap between overs and the whole exchange lands
in one file:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --record 0 --hang 6
```
`--record 0` is the important half. Without it the per-signal cap cuts the
exchange off mid-sentence no matter what the hang time is — the default 30
seconds is a common surprise. `--max-record` (default 900 s) still bounds an
unlimited capture so nothing runs away.
To make it the permanent default:
```bash
bandsaunter config record_seconds=0 hang_seconds=6
```
"Quiet" means *no real signal*, not merely a closed squelch. Silence, static
and interference all count towards the timer, so a burst of noise during a
pause does not reset it and park the receiver on a finished conversation.
Recognising that a signal carries nothing takes a couple of seconds of
evidence, so expect the tail to run a little past `--hang` in that case.
Once a capture has produced real content it is never abandoned as noise, since
a quiet spell between overs would otherwise throw the conversation away.
## Only real signals get recorded
A power threshold cannot tell a transmission from a hump of interference, so
every capture is checked for *content* before it is kept. Recording happens
only for:
| Category | What it means |
|---|---|
| `voice` | speech structure in the demodulated audio: a pitch track in the 70-400 Hz range that drifts the way intonation does, pauses between phrases, syllable-rate envelope modulation, and formants that move |
| `cw` | a keyed carrier whose timing resolves as Morse |
| `digital` | an identified keying scheme: discrete FSK levels, an M-PSK phase line, or on-off keying -- corroborated by a symbol rate |
Everything else -- static, hum, switch-mode power supply harmonics, clock
spurs, bare carriers -- is discarded, and the files it wrote are deleted.
The check runs *while* the capture is still going, so interference is dropped
after a second or two instead of holding the receiver for the whole record
time.
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m # voice, CW and digital (default)
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --accept voice # voice only
bandsaunter scan -b ism-433 --accept digital # data bursts only
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --keep-carriers # also keep unmodulated carriers
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --keep-everything # no content check at all
```
Tuning knobs: `--min-voice-score` (0-1, default 0.45) sets how speech-like
audio must be; `--min-signal-score` sets the confidence needed to keep
anything; `--verify-max` caps how long a contentless capture is given to prove
itself.
### What makes this hold up against interference
Static is good at imitating most of the things that look like structure, so
each test is built so that noise cannot pass it:
- **A pitch track that moves gates the voice score**, rather than contributing
a share of it. Dynamics, syllable-rate modulation and energy in the voice
band are all things hiss does too; weighted alongside voicing they were
enough to carry noise over the line on their own. Speech is the only thing
here that produces a pitch period that drifts, so nothing is called voice
without one. A steady tone or mains hum has a perfectly stable "pitch" and
is rejected for exactly that reason. Measuring drift needs several voiced
frames, so the requirement eases for a short over that cannot supply them;
the steady-tone guard still applies.
- **A symbol rate has to hold still across the capture.** The estimator always
returns its best peak, so on noise it reports one rate for the first half of
a capture and a different one for the second. Real data keeps one.
- **Keying has to land on a grid.** On/off contrast alone is not evidence: a
signal fading across the squelch produces plenty of it, with run lengths
that fit no symbol period at all.
- **A phase line has to be created by the exponentiation.** An unmodulated
carrier -- including the gaps between phrases on an FM channel -- already
has a line at every power, and would otherwise look like textbook PSK.
- **The demodulator is chosen from the signal**, not from the band plan, by
probing briefly before recording. An AM signal inside a
band listed as FM would otherwise be recorded through the wrong detector,
giving audio that is useless to listen to and impossible to judge. Three
ratios settle it — how much the envelope varies, how far the tone swings,
and how much power sits in a carrier — because those hold steady over a
fraction of a second whatever is being said. Running the full classifier on
so short a probe was tried and is not reliable: speech makes any modulation
look bursty over half a second, and AM came back as on-off keying while FM
came back as AM. The probe is played into the recording rather than
discarded, so a short over does not lose its opening.
- **Content is judged only on the audio that was actually recorded**, and only
on the stretches the squelch called signal. Demodulating two ways and
keeping whichever scored higher is cherry-picking, and on noise one of the
two always flatters it.
The gate needs roughly two seconds of audio to judge speech reliably, so pair
it with `--record 5` or more rather than very short capture limits.
### Keeping up with the radio
An RTL-SDR only delivers samples while the host is actively reading. Anything
that arrives while the program is busy demodulating is discarded by the
driver, and a recording then holds *less* than really went by -- which plays
back too fast.
Two things keep that from happening:
- **Captures stream asynchronously.** A ring of USB transfers stays queued in
a background thread, so the dongle is never waiting for the host. Sweeping
still uses plain reads, because each dwell is an independent snapshot and a
gap between them costs nothing.
- **The signal path is fast enough to keep up.** Decimation computes only the
samples that survive, rather than filtering at the input rate and throwing
away seven of every eight outputs; the quarter-rate local oscillator is the
four-step cycle 1, -j, -1, +j and needs no trigonometry; and pitch tracking
runs through the FFT instead of a direct autocorrelation per frame. Together
those took the capture loop from 65% of the real-time budget to under 10%.
If the host does fall behind anyway, the scan reports how many samples were
lost rather than silently producing a fast recording.
### Why the threshold is what it is
The sweep uses peak-hold, which keeps the largest value each FFT bin reached
during the dwell. That finds bursty traffic that averaging would bury -- but
it also means noise alone rides several dB above the measured floor. On this
hardware, empty spectrum reaches 5-9 dB above a percentile floor with nothing
transmitting.
So `--threshold` is a margin over *noise*, not over the floor: the offset that
noise alone clears is computed from the detector (segment count and bin count)
and added automatically. A threshold of 8 means 8 dB of real headroom. It is
deliberately not measured from the spectrum -- a spread estimated from the
data reads five times higher across the packed broadcast FM band than on empty
spectrum, which would suppress exactly the stations you are looking for.
## Signal identification
Every recording is classified from its own IQ. The classifier measures
occupied bandwidth, envelope statistics, discriminator levels, phase
behaviour, spectral flatness and symbol rate, then combines those with the
frequency to name the signal:
| Family | Recognised as |
|---|---|
| Analogue voice | Narrowband FM (with CTCSS tone or DCS), wideband FM (stereo pilot detected), AM, SSB (USB/LSB) |
| CW | Keyed carrier, **decoded to text** with the speed in WPM |
| Digital voice | P25 C4FM, DMR (TDMA burst structure), NXDN, D-STAR |
| Data | POCSAG and FLEX paging, ACARS, AIS, APRS/AFSK1200, 2-FSK and 4-FSK, BPSK/QPSK/8-PSK |
| Other | Unmodulated carriers, OOK/ISM devices, ADS-B and UAT, DME/TACAN pulses, wideband OFDM/cellular |
Each result carries a confidence and the reasoning behind it:
```
146.520038 MHz 3.0s SNR 27.6 dB Narrowband FM voice (CTCSS 100.0 Hz) (88%)
4.9 kHz wide, 0.9 kHz rms deviation
```
Low SNR reduces confidence rather than producing a confident wrong answer.
### CW / Morse
Keyed carriers are decoded to text. The speed is measured from the signal, so
nothing has to be configured, and anything from about 8 to 40 WPM reads
reliably:
```
144.1 MHz 12.0s SNR 50.8 dB CW / Morse at 18 WPM CW "VVV DE W1AW FN31"
```
The decoder runs its own CW detector over the captured IQ, so Morse is found
even when the recording itself was made in FM or SSB.
## Output
Everything lands in one directory, named
`frequency--yyyy-mm-dd_hour_minute_second-modulation.wav`:
```
0014.058000MHz--2026-08-21_20_35_41-cw.wav
0098.299255MHz--2026-08-21_20_24_01-wfm.wav demodulated audio
0098.299255MHz--2026-08-21_20_24_01-wfm.json identification, features, timing
0098.299255MHz--2026-08-21_20_24_01-wfm.cf32 raw IQ (with --iq)
0098.299255MHz--2026-08-21_20_24_01-wfm.sigmf-meta SigMF sidecar (with --iq)
0098.299255MHz--2026-08-21_20_24_01-wfm_transcription.txt (with --transcribe)
0098.361991MHz--2026-08-21_20_24_18-wfm.wav
0146.520000MHz--2026-08-21_20_31_02-nfm.wav
1090.000000MHz--2026-08-21_20_38_12-raw.wav
scan_log.jsonl one line per hit
scan_log.csv the same, as a spreadsheet
```
Frequency leads and is padded to four digits, so a plain directory listing
sorts by frequency across the whole tuning range — unpadded, 1090 MHz would
sort before 146 MHz. Each channel's captures group together with the
timestamp ordering them. Every artefact of one capture shares a stem, and the
modulation suffix is what the signal was *identified* as, so the file is
renamed once the capture has been analysed.
### Where files go
The directory is asked for the first time bandsaunter is run and remembered
afterwards:
```
Recordings, transcripts and the scan log are all written to one directory.
Where would you like them?
recordings directory (~/bandsaunter):
```
It is an ordinary setting, so it can be changed at any time:
```bash
bandsaunter config output_dir=~/somewhere-else
bandsaunter scan -b 2m -o /tmp/just-this-once
```
The question is only asked when there is someone to answer it: a scan run from
a script or with output redirected uses the default rather than blocking, and
`--no-config` skips it entirely.
### One file per frequency
With `--combine`, each frequency gets a single file that every later reception
is appended to, so a whole watch on a channel plays back as one recording:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --combine --record 0 --hang 6
```
```
recordings/
146.520000MHz.wav every transmission heard on 146.520, in order
147.100000MHz.wav
146.520692MHz--2026-08-21_13_21_20-nfm.json what each capture was
scan_log.csv
```
Each transmission is preceded by **its date and time read aloud**, so the file
says when everything was heard without needing the log open. Receptions within
`--combine-tolerance` (6.25 kHz by default) of each other count as the same
channel, which covers the few hundred hertz a detection wanders by.
The file is rewritten to stay valid after every append, so it can be opened
and played while the scan is still running, and a scan stopped part-way still
leaves a working recording. A later run continues the same file rather than
starting a new one.
By default the per-transmission WAVs are removed once they have been added, so
each recording exists in one place; `--keep-individual` keeps both. The `.json`
describing each capture is written either way.
`--no-announce` leaves the timestamps out, and `--announce-frequency` reads the
frequency out as well.
### Where the speech comes from
The announcements use an installed text-to-speech program if there is one
(`espeak-ng`, `espeak`, `pico2wave`, `flite`, `say`) and fall back to a
built-in formant synthesiser otherwise, so the feature works with nothing else
installed. `--announce-engine builtin` forces the built-in one; the scan plan
reports which is in use.
The two are given different wording. An installed engine gets ordinary text,
where punctuation is what produces the phrasing — and the obvious spellings
are traps: espeak-ng reads `14:38:05` as "fourteen thirty, eight zero five",
and an ISO date as "two thousand and twenty six dash zero eight dash twenty
one". It is given `August 21, twenty twenty six, at 14 38 and 05 seconds`
instead. The built-in synthesiser gets the word list it has pronunciations
for. Both are level-matched, so switching between them does not change how
loud the announcements sit against the recordings.
It only has to say numbers, month names and a handful of words, which makes
direct synthesis practical: a glottal source through a cascade of three
formant resonators, with the formant tracks interpolated between phonemes.
The test suite checks by LPC analysis that all ten vowels come out within
130 Hz of their intended first formant and 250 Hz of their second — summing
the resonators in parallel rather than cascading them loses the first formant
entirely and makes every vowel sound the same.
### Transcribing speech to text
With `--transcribe`, anything the content check identified as **voice** is
passed to a speech recogniser and the words are written beside the recording:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 2m --transcribe
```
```
146.520000MHz--2026-08-21_12_18_38-nfm.wav
146.520000MHz--2026-08-21_12_18_38-nfm_transcription.txt
146.520000MHz--2026-08-21_12_18_38-nfm.json
```
Only voice is transcribed — running a recogniser over Morse or a data burst
costs seconds and produces nothing. CW is decoded separately and appears in
the metadata as text already.
**A capture with nothing recognisable in it produces no file.** Music, a
carrier with an open mic, a fragment too short to make out: nothing is
written, rather than a directory of placeholders. The transcript is also
copied into the capture's `.json`, which names it only once it exists — so the
metadata never points at a file that was never created. The scan reports the
tally at the end:
```
2 transcript(s) written, 1 with no recognisable speech
```
Recognition takes seconds per capture, far longer than a capture itself, so it
runs on its own thread and the scan never waits for it; anything still queued
is finished when the scan stops. When recordings are being combined by
frequency there is one transcript per frequency too, each line stamped with
the time:
```
[2026-08-21 12:18:38] this is what the first transmission said
[2026-08-21 12:24:02] and this is the second
```
### Getting a recogniser
Unlike the spoken announcements, this needs an installed engine — recognition
depends on a trained model, so there is no built-in fallback.
```bash
bandsaunter transcribe --engines # what is installed
pip install faster-whisper # the recommended one
```
| Engine | Notes |
|---|---|
| `faster-whisper` | best on radio audio; ~120 MB of dependencies, model downloads on first use |
| `whisper` | the original; heavier |
| `whisper-cli` | whisper.cpp, no Python dependencies |
| `vosk` | ~10 MB plus a 40 MB model, fully offline, but weaker on noisy audio |
| `pocketsphinx` | tiny; poor on radio audio |
The difference is easy to measure. Both engines on the same 26-second
off-air recording:
```
faster-whisper 3.4s "August 21, 2026, at 13.42 and 28 seconds,
96.108 megahertz, 13.42 and 47 seconds, ..."
vosk 11.2s "august twenty one twenty twenty six at thirteen
forty two i'm twenty eight seconds ... forty
family factories ..."
```
Whisper is both more accurate and three times faster, and it punctuates.
Vosk's advantage is size and that it needs nothing after its model is
downloaded once.
`--transcribe-model` selects the size (`tiny.en`, `base.en`, `small.en`,
`medium.en`) and `--transcribe-language` fixes the language — worth setting,
since on a short noisy clip automatic detection often guesses wrong and
returns nonsense in another language.
Existing recordings can be transcribed after the fact:
```bash
bandsaunter transcribe recordings/ # every WAV in a directory
bandsaunter transcribe one.wav --stdout
```
Re-examine anything later:
```bash
bandsaunter analyze recordings/2026-08-19/.../iq.cf32 # identify
bandsaunter analyze recordings/2026-08-19/.../audio.wav # decode CW
```
## Live controls
The display sizes itself to the terminal, giving up the spectrum row, then the
hit list, then the key hints as space runs short. A frame taller than the
terminal cannot be redrawn in place, so an oversized one would leave a copy of
itself behind on every refresh.
For the same reason the driver's own messages are suppressed while a scan
runs: librtlsdr writes them straight to file descriptor 2 from C — including
`Allocating 15 zero-copy buffers` on *every* capture — and they draw over the
display and break its cursor tracking. `bandsaunter devices` still shows them,
since that is the command to run when something is wrong, and
`BANDSAUNTER_DRIVER_MESSAGES=1` restores them everywhere.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| `q` | stop |
| `p` | pause / resume |
| `s` | skip this signal, resume sweeping |
| `l` | lock out this frequency for the rest of the run |
| `+` / `-` | adjust the squelch threshold |
## Built-in help
Press `h` in the menus for topics covering setup, how the sweep works, why
nothing (or too much) is being recorded, capturing conversations, where files
go, HF reception and the keys available during a scan. Typing a setting name
there explains that setting instead.
From the command line, `bandsaunter config --describe <setting>` does the same,
and `bandsaunter scan --help` lists every flag grouped the same way as the menus.
## HF
Frequencies below 24 MHz need direct sampling, which most RTL-SDR dongles
support on the Q branch. It is selected automatically:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -b 40m-cw --record 60 # 40 m CW, decoded to text
bandsaunter scan -b am-broadcast
```
You will need an HF antenna; the tuner is bypassed in this mode, so there is
no front-end filtering or gain.
## How the sweep works
- The band is covered in steps of `sample_rate x usable_fraction / 2`. The
local oscillator is parked *below* the span each step covers, so the
RTL2832's DC spike never lands inside the frequencies being searched.
- The noise floor is measured per FFT bin as a sliding low percentile, which
follows the receiver's passband shape and steps over signals. There is no
warm-up period, and a station that transmits constantly does not learn
itself into the floor.
- The sweep uses peak-hold rather than averaging across each dwell, so bursty
traffic — CW, packet, a short over — is not averaged into the noise.
- On a hit, the receiver retunes with a quarter-rate LO offset (moving the DC
spike off the signal), probes once at ~60 Hz resolution to measure the real
occupied bandwidth, and picks the demodulator from that plus the band plan.
## Without hardware
`--simulate` swaps in a synthetic receiver carrying one of each interesting
signal type, which is also what the test suite runs against:
```bash
bandsaunter scan -r 144M-148M --simulate
```
## Testing
```bash
python -m pytest
```
Covers DSP invariants, frequency parsing, the classifier against synthetic
signals at several SNRs and random seeds, Morse decoding from 8 to 40 WPM, the
voice detector against synthetic speech and against noise, tones and hum, and
full scan runs through the simulator checking that `--record` and `--hang` are
obeyed, that static and bare carriers are never written to disk, and that
audio, IQ and metadata are correct.
The simulator's voice transmitters carry synthesised speech -- glottal pulses
through moving formants, compressed the way a real transmitter compresses,
then gated into syllables and phrases -- because sine tones would not exercise
the speech detector at all.
## Legal note
Receiving is not the same as being allowed to use or divulge what you hear. In
the US, the ECPA prohibits intercepting cellular and other private
communications, and rebroadcasting or acting on what you receive is separately
restricted. Check your local rules.