rtlmic: Wireless microphone receiver for RTL-SDR

rtlmic is a multichannel FM microphone receiver/demodulator for RTL-SDR cards. It outputs realtime audio to JACK.

Installation

Dependencies:

• libjack
• libvolk
• librtlsdr

To build and install, just use make && sudo make install.

Usage

Basic usage is simply:

$ rtlmic [channel 1 frequency] [channel 2 frequency]...

You can capture as many channels as your CPU can handle, as long as they all fit within the capture bandwidth of the RTL-SDR.

Use rtlmic --help to see all available options.

In order to get back correct audio, you should know certain parameters about your microphones: the companding ratio (-e), the companding tau (-E), the deemphasis tau (-M), and the FM deviation (-w).

Most microphones use 2:1 companding (the default ratio). The companding tau is usually determined by an R-C filter in the microphone, connected to the compressor chip. In my case, the component values are 10kΩ and 1µF, which gives 10kΩ * 1µF = 10ms tau. The deemphasis tau just affects the frequency response: the higher the tau, the less high-end the microphone will have. If you do not know the exact values for your microphone, you can just try and see what sounds best.

By default, the RTL-SDR will be tuned to the frequency in between the highest and lowest channel specified. However, if you have a channel near that point (e.g. if you are only capturing one channel, or an odd number of evenly spaced channels) then you may experience additional noise, as the RTL-SDR does not perform well near DC. You can work around this by choosing a different center frequency with -f.

You may want to play around with other parameters, e.g. adjusting the tuner gain (-g) and squelch threshold (-s), as well as the audio gain (-a). If your channels are spaced closely together, lower the transition width (-t) and use a tight deviation (-w). Note that lowering the transition width increases CPU usage significantly.

If you have persistent buffer over/underrun problems, you should try changing the buffering settings -b and -B, as well as the JACK period size in the JACK server. A few under/overruns on startup are normal, as it takes some time for rtlmic to lock onto the exact ratio between the true SDR and JACK frequencies.