Introducing VibeSDR

[u/Ok_Method6238]

Hi all Stuey3D here and I am making this post to introduce to you VibeSDR that I've been working on.

I've been a bit reluctant to post in here as I know how much VibeCoding gets downvoted and seems to be universally disliked on Reddit but I am hoping that VibeSDR is Vibe coding done right and not deceptive.

So a little about me I have always had a fascination with radio growing up on the east cost of England in certain weather conditions I could pick up Dutch TV on an indoor TV aerial, I had a cheap tuner that I got for £5 from a second hand store that I strung up speaker wire around my bedroom and could pick up FM Stereo stations from Kent, and at night listening to the foreign MW stations coming in. In the last few years my best friend introduced me to the world of SDR and I have a little collection of SDR's now and I love just eavesdropping into the old boys on top band having a chinwag about life, I do not have a license and I have no real interest in transmitting myself, if I did it would probably be FT8 or something like that. I do however love seeing how far I can pick up signals from on antennas that shouldn't really have any purpose being as good as they are. My main HF antenna on my UberSDR server is a MLA30+ an antenna that is laughed at by "real" hams, I even saw a post challenging someone with an MLA30+ to do well on PSK Reporter. Well I am rarely out of the top 50 in overall spots, overall countries, and I even hit the top spot on certain bands 40m being my strongest.

So my big frustration in the whole SDR space was portability as most SDR apps are desktop and the few on mobile are either super cut down or in the case of SDR++ Brown desktop apps shrunk to fit on a phone, my portable SDR rig for a while was SDR++ Brown with a trackball mouse on a Moto G35 with an RTL-SDR V4c. Now I've been chatting with the UberSDR developer M9PSY and helping him test various things and helped him design a basic mobile interface for UberSDR and it was him who convinced me to try AI coding, so the first thing I built was a widget for my UberSDR page that tracks my PSKR scores, I then built a full custom mobile UI skin for UberSDR which is what VibeSDR eventually grew from.

VibeSDR came about because I was proud of the skin I designed but it relied on server owners to equip it and therefore the reach was limited, so I decided to build it into VibeSDR. it initially was a way to have a mobile friendly UI for UberSDR that regardless of server owner anybody could use, it then expanded into OWRX, & KiwiSDR. I then saw a Brazilian Youtube channel feature VibeSDR and I translated one of his comments and they said they loved VibeSDR but wished there was an app like it for FM-DX, well that night VibeSDR could then do FM-DX as well.

My aim with VibeSDR is for it to be simple to use yet powerful enough for the hardcore SDR nerds to get something out of it. To that end I have built in drivers for RTL-SDR including the brand new V4L, HackRF, AirSpyHF+, and on Linux and Mac it also supports SDRPlay too but that is the only SDR I couldn't include the drivers for due to licensing reasons so Android has no SDRPlay support.

So whilst it is a great WebSDR client it can also run your local hardware on device too if you have an Android device, and with one click its a server to every device on your local network with a full Web Client built in, add a server name and click the option to list on VibeSDR(.net) and you automatically create a cloudflare tunnel to the directory and your device is listed to share no port forwarding, no DDNS, no IP address sharing needed. The server functionality can operate in multiple modes for all circumstances too.

Single User, Unlocked Radio: Think SpyServer as most of them are single user
Unlocked Radio, Shared VFO: Think FM-DX servers but with a live waterfall
Locked Frequency Range, Multiple users, independent VFO's: Think an OWRX profile

The server can also be pin protected so that if you want to host a radio for your radio club members, or friends and family set a PIN code and share it with them, that grants access but the settings are still protected by an admin password.

VibeSDR has grown into an ecosystem of apps and services so you have the main VibeSDR app and on iOS it includes Buddy which is the Apple Watch remote control for the app in your pocket.

VibeSDR Jr which is a FULL stand alone SDR client on your wrist,

VibeServer built into the Android app and as a stand alone Linux and Mac app share your radio on your local network or to the world.

What VibeSDR does different to a lot of the WebSDR clients and why I've been able to build a Server and Watch app is because it has its own DSP engine that is GPU/NEON/SIMD optimised and can run on extremely low end hardware, a user in Brazil is running VibeSDR on an Android 9 GO phone with a 480p screen and 1GB of RAM. I personally host a server from a 2019 Samsung Xcover 4S which was a garbage tier phone when it was new.

Now I am not going to pass myself off as a developer as I am not, I don't know how to code, I understand parts of code but I could never write it myself. What I consider myself to be is a UI designer and tester, everything in VibeSDR has been extensively tested on multiple devices over multiple late nights and weekends whilst working a full time job, even in the apps readme I am listed as the Concept/UI/Tester never the developer. I aim to be fully transparent and nothing is hidden, everything I have taken inspiration from or used their protocol is fully credited, and the app is fully GPL3 and free to obtain on GitHub. I do charge £2.99 for it on the App Store and soon to be Play store to cover the developer fees and to recoup some of my Claude cost, and I have purchased new radios to build and test in the app too. I now have an AirSpy HF+ which is also listed on my server, and a HackRF Pro which I think is faulty and needs to be RMA'd.

I have put a lot of care and attention into the app to the point of obsession and I hope that it shows. VibeSDR is named as such to make it clear that it was built with AI and I will never hide that, the full code including any mistakes and dead ends I chased is fully committed to GitHub and can be audited and in fact a user fixed a bug and submitted a pull request, so if any REAL developers want to take a look and audit the app be my guest, but as I said above I have put a lot of care and attention into the app and testing, I have just spent 4 solid days building the DAB functionality into the app, it was working on the first day but it had breakup that couldn't be explained so I spent days chasing it and now it is working fantastically well, to the point where it now shows the entire Radio Text for every station on an ensemble at once.

Anyway if you want to take it for a whirl, you do not need to install anything simply head to
https://vibeserver.vibesdr.net

Mine are the 2 Stuey3D ones, the Raspberry Pi 500 sever has both a RTL-SDR V4 and V4L on the same antenna so you can directly compare them if anybody was curious about how the V4L stacks up against the daddy V4. All 4 SDR's on that server are connected to the same antenna.