Joining the FM Live Bandscan

Joining the FM live bandscan requires the follow.

• A Windows computer
• SDR Console software (free for non-commercial use) and compatible hardware
• A virtual serial port program such as com0com (free)
• Software from this site that commands SDR Console to scan the FM broadcast band (see below)

Install SDR Console and get it working with your radio hardware. You should be able to listen to FM broadcast stations before proceeding.

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Install a virtual serial port pair and configure SDR Console. For more information on SDR Console serial port usage and compatible software, see https://www.sdr-radio.com/SerialPort

If you're using com0com, installing it should automatically create a virtual port pair or two that looks something like this when you run com0com setup:

The software you will download from this site and SDR Console will use COM5 and COM6 in this example. If you only see a pair named CNCA0 and CNCB0 or similar, fix that by checking the two "use Ports class" check boxes and Apply. The names should change to COM5 and COM4 (or some other numbers). Make a note of the two COM numbers, you will need them later.

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After you've installed and created a virtual serial port pair, configure SDR Console as follows:

Select a virtual serial port. Navigate to Tools->Options under Controllers->Cat (Serial Port) section. Make sure only the higher numbered virtual serial port you created earlier is checked. It should look like this:

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Enable the RDS database. Navigate to Receive->Broadcast FM dropdown->Options->RDS Logfile->Configuration->Database and make sure the Enable checkbox is checked. Do not change the database file name or path. It should be something like: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\SDR-RADIO.com (V3)\RDSDatabase.sqlite of course the account name (user in this example) will be different on your computer.

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Start the radio and Set the mode to BC-FM. In the waterfall on the bottom at the right is a keyboard icon. Click it and set the span to +/- 100 khz or bandwidth to 200 khz and check the "Center if off-screen" and Auto-update checkboxes. This will prevent SDR console from having some frequencies tuned incorrectly.

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To have SDR Console start the radio automatically, go to Tools->Options->Start and select Autostart. After SDR Console and a virtual serial port pair are configured, you need to e-mail me with a few details:

• Your geographic coordinates (preferably in decimal instead of degrees, minutes, seconds)
• Town name and state or province
• A short description of your reciver and antenna if you're willing to share that.

Then I need to do some server-side configuration and send you the program to install and a numeric user ID to enter into the installer for it. It will also ask for the virtual COM port to use. Use the lower virtual serial port COM number you created earlier.

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If everything goes OK, after a minute or so SDR Console will start scanning through the FM band and, after a few minutes, you will see results at https://rabbitears.info/tvdx/fm_all_tuners

If you have any further questions which are not answered here, please let me know. Enjoy!