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welle.io

This repository contains the implementation of an SDR DAB/DAB+ receiver.
Please see the project website https://www.welle.io for a user oriented documentation.

Build status

  • Linux (Flatpak x86_64 and arm64): Linux build
  • Windows (Installer x86_64): Windows build
  • Android (APK): build workflow is currently disabled because a new, skilled maintainer for Android package is required to fix bug AlbrechtL#814 in the workflow.

Table of contents

Download

Stable binaries

  • Windows
  • Linux (flatpak version is recommend because Linux distribution packages welle.io can be outdated.
    • Flatpak
    • Full list of supported Linux distributions
    • Debian or Ubuntu 19.04+: 
      $ apt install welle.io`
    • Fedora 35+ (uses the RPM Fusion package sources) 
      # Enable the RPM Fusion sources
$ sudo dnf install -y https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm` 

# Install welle.io
$ sudo dnf install --refresh welle-io
  • macOS Unfortunately the macOS welle.io is unmaintained, currently. You still can use the 2.4 version (only Intel processor support).
    • Installer
    • MacPorts 
      $ sudo port install welle.io
  • Android (Unfortunately unmaintained, currently. You still can use the 2.4 version)
  • FreeBSD 
    $ pkg install welle.io

If you discovered an issue please open a new issue.

Developer version

welle.io is under development. You can also try the latest developer builds. But PLEASE BE WARNED the builds are automatically created and untested.

Usage

Since welle.io is a GUI program simply start it.

Command-line parameters

Parameter Description
-h, --help Show help
-v, --version Show version
--dump-file Records DAB frames (.mp2) or DAB+ superframes with RS coding (.dab). This file can be used to analyse X-PAD data with XPADxpert (https://www.basicmaster.de/xpadxpert).
--log-file Log file name. Redirects all log output texts to a file.

Keyboard shortcuts & hotkeys

Keystroke Action
F1-F12, 1-9, 0, Ctrl+1-9, Ctrl+0 Play the station no. 'x' in the stations list:
1 for station no. 1,
0 for station no. 10,
Ctrl+1 for station no. 11...
S, Media Play, Media Stop, Media Pause, Media Play/Pause Start playback/Stop
N, Media next play next station in list
P, Media Previous play previous station
M, Volume Mute mute/unmute
Ctrl+Up, Volume Up Volume Up
Ctrl+Down, Volume Down Volume Down

Supported Hardware

The following SDR devices are supported

  • RTL2832U
  • Airspy R2 and Airspy Mini
    • Limitation: Airspy HF+ is not supported due to limited bandwidth
  • I/Q RAW file
  • SoapySDR: All SDR-devices that are supported by SoapySDR, gr-osmosdr and uhd. These are too many devices to list them all. To see if your SDR is supported, have a look at the lists at SoapySDR and SoapyOsmo.
    • Devices supported by gr-osmosdr are supported via SoapyOsmo
    • Devices supported by uhd are supported via SoapyUHD
    • Notes
      • LimeSDR: Connect the antenna to the RX1_W port and configured SoapySDR antenna option to LNAW. SoapySDRUtil --probe=driver=lime may show other possible options.
      • USRP: Configured SoapySDR driver arguments option to driver=uhd. Configure also antenna and clock source option. To list possible values for antenna and clock source use the command SoapySDRUtil --probe=driver=uhd.
      • One limitation is of course that the SDR devices must be tunable to the DAB+ frequencies.

Building

General Information

The following libraries and their development files are needed.

  • Qt 6.8 or above
  • libfftw3
  • libfaad
  • librtlsdr
  • libusb
  • libmpg123
  • libairspy
  • libmp3lame
  • libsoapysdr

Debian / Ubuntu Linux

This section shows how to compile welle.io on Debian or Ubuntu (tested with Ubuntu 24.04).

  1. Install the base requirements
sudo apt install git build-essential
  1. Install the following non-Qt packages
sudo apt install libfaad-dev libmpg123-dev libfftw3-dev librtlsdr-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libpulse-dev libsoapysdr-dev libairspy-dev libmp3lame-dev libflac++-dev xxd
  1. Install the Qt via the Qt online installer. It is recommend to use the newest Qt version. Besids Qt you need the additional Qt libraries:
  • Qt 5 Compatibility Module
  • Qt Charts
  • Qt Multimedia
  1. Clone welle.io
git clone https://github.com/AlbrechtL/welle.io.git
  1. Start Qt Creator and open the project file welle.io.pro inside the folder "welle.io".
  2. Build welle.io
  3. Run welle.io and enjoy it

Windows 11

This section shows how to compile welle.io on Windows 11. Windows 10 and 7 should also be possible but is not tested.

  1. Install the Qt via the Qt online installer. It is recommend to use the newest Qt version. Besids Qt you need the additional Qt libraries:
  • Qt 5 Compatibility Module
  • Qt Charts
  • Qt Multimedia
  1. Clone welle.io https://github.com/AlbrechtL/welle.io.git e.g. by using TortoiseGit.
  2. Clone the welle.io Windows libraries https://github.com/AlbrechtL/welle.io-win-libs.git.
  3. Start Qt Creator and open the project file welle.io.pro inside the folder "welle.io".
  4. Build welle.io
  5. Run welle.io and enjoy it

macOS, Android and FreeBSD

These operating systems are not maintain, currently. You can find the original compiling insturections in the old README.md.

CMake

As an alternative to Qt Creator, CMake can be used for building welle.io after installing dependencies and cloning the repository. On Linux, you can also use CMake to build welle-cli, the command-line backend testing tool that does not require Qt.

  1. Create a build directory inside the repository and change into it
mkdir build
cd build
  1. Run CMake. To enable support for RTL-SDR add the flag -DRTLSDR=1 (requires librtlsdr) and for SoapySDR add -DSOAPYSDR=1 (requires SoapySDR compiled with support for each desired hardware, e.g. UHD for Ettus USRP, LimeSDR, Airspy or HackRF). By default, CMake will build both welle-io and welle-cli. Use -DBUILD_WELLE_IO=OFF or -DBUILD_WELLE_CLI=OFF to compile only the one you need.
cmake ..

or to enable support for both RTL-SDR and Soapy-SDR:

cmake .. -DRTLSDR=1 -DSOAPYSDR=1

If you wish to use KISS FFT instead of FFTW (e.g. to compare performance), use -DKISS_FFT=ON.

  1. Run make (or use the created project file depending on the selected generator)
make
  1. Install it (as super-user)
make install
  1. Run welle.io and enjoy it

welle-cli

If you compile welle-io with cmake you will also get an executable called welle-cli which stands for welle-io command line interface.

Usage of welle-cli

Receive using RTLSDR, and play with ALSA:

`welle-cli -c channel -p programme`

Read an IQ file and play with ALSA: (IQ file format is u8, unless the file ends with FORMAT.iq)

`welle-cli -f file -p programme`

Use -D to dump FIC and all programmes to files:

`welle-cli -c channel -D`

Use -w to enable webserver, decode a programme on demand:

`welle-cli -c channel -w port`

Use -Dw to enable webserver, decode all programmes:

`welle-cli -c channel -Dw port`

Use -C 1 -w to enable webserver, decode programmes one by one in a carousel. Use -C N -w to enable webserver, decode programmes N by N in a carousel. This is useful if your machine cannot decode all programmes simultaneously, but you still want to get an overview of the ensemble. By default, welle-cli will switch every 10 seconds. With the -P option, welle-cli will switch once DLS and a slide were decoded, staying at most for 80 seconds on a given programme.

welle-cli -c channel -C 1 -w port
welle-cli -c channel -PC 1 -w port

Example: welle-cli -c 12A -C 1 -w 7979 enables the webserver on channel 12A, please then go to http://localhost:7979/ where you can observe all necessary details for every service ID in the ensemble, see the slideshows, stream the audio (by clicking on the Play-Button), check spectrum, constellation, TII information and CIR peak diagramme.

Streaming output options

By default, welle-cli will output in mp3 if in webserver mode. With the -O option, you can choose between mp3 and flac (lossless) if FLAC support is enabled at build time.

Backend options

-u disable coarse corrector, for receivers who have a low frequency offset.

Use -t [test_number] to run a test. To understand what the tests do, please see source code.

Driver options

By default, welle-cli tries all enabled drivers in turn and uses the first device it can successfully open.

Use -F [driver][,driver_args] to select a specific driver and optionally pass arguments to the driver. This allows to select the rtl_tcp driver (which is not auto-detected) and pass the hostname or IP address and port of the rtl_tcp server to it:

welle-cli -C 10B -p GRRIF -F rtl_tcp,192.168.12.34:1234
welle-cli -C 10B -P GRRIF -F rtl_tcp,my.rtl-tcp.local:9876

Right now, rtl_tcp is the only driver that accepts options from the command line.

Examples:

welle-cli -c 10B -p GRRIF
welle-cli -f ./ofdm.iq -p GRRIF
welle-cli -f ./ofdm.iq -t 1

Installing welle-cli as a persistent web server

This section explains how to run welle-cli as a background service that starts automatically at boot, with automatic restart if it crashes or hangs.

1. Build and install welle-cli (without Qt)
sudo apt install git build-essential libfaad-dev libmpg123-dev libfftw3-dev \
    librtlsdr-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev libmp3lame-dev libflac++-dev xxd

git clone https://github.com/DABodr/welle.io.git
cd welle.io
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DBUILD_WELLE_IO=OFF -DRTLSDR=ON -DFLAC=ON
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install
2. Install the systemd service
sudo cp scripts/welle-cli.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable welle-cli
sudo systemctl start welle-cli

The default service file starts welle-cli on channel 9A with carousel mode and web port 7777:

ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/welle-cli -c 9A -PC 1 -w 7777

Edit /etc/systemd/system/welle-cli.service to change the channel or port, then run sudo systemctl restart welle-cli.

The service is configured with Restart=always and RestartSec=3, so it will automatically restart after 3 seconds if it stops for any reason (including hangs due to the RTL-SDR driver).

3. Access the web interface

Open http://<server-ip>:7777/ in your browser. The interface lets you:

  • Browse all services in the DAB ensemble
  • Play audio streams
  • Monitor SNR, spectrum, constellation and CIR
  • View TII transmitter information
  • Change the DAB channel
  • Restart the service remotely (↺ button in the footer)
4. (Optional) Add a transmitter site database

If you have a FMLIST-compatible CSV database (semicolon-separated, with columns eid, tii, location), you can inject it into the web interface to display transmitter site names alongside TII identifiers:

python3 scripts/generate-tii-db.py /path/to/dab-tx-list.csv
make -j$(nproc) -C build welle-cli
sudo make -C build install
sudo systemctl restart welle-cli

Note: Do not commit src/welle-cli/index.js after running this script if the CSV data is under copyright (e.g. FMLIST data requires prior written authorisation for public redistribution).

Updating
cd welle.io
git checkout src/welle-cli/index.js   # reset local TII data if previously injected
git pull
# re-inject TII data if needed (see step 4 above)
make -j$(nproc) -C build welle-cli
sudo make -C build install
sudo systemctl restart welle-cli

Limitations

  • Windows 10 and older are not officially supported.

Development

You can join the welle.io development. Please visit the wiki to find more information.

Profiling

If you build with cmake and add -DPROFILING=ON, welle-io will generate a few .csv files and a graphviz .dot file that can be used to analyse and understand which parts of the backend use CPU resources. Use dot -Tpdf profiling.dot > profiling.pdf to generate a graph visualisation. Search source code for the PROFILE() macro to see where the profiling marks are placed.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thanks to following open source projects. Without these great works this program would not be possible

Sponsors

[SignPath] Free code signing on Windows provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation

About

A DAB/DAB+ Software Defined Radio (SDR)

www.welle.io

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