Project update 23 of 23
KrakenSDR Community & Web Mapper Updates
by KrakenRF IncIn this first update of 2025, we want to share some community news about KrakenSDR and some updates to our KrakenSDR Web Mapper.
Community News
Over on YouTube various KrakenSDR customers have been uploading videos showing the device in action.
In the first video by ‘The Comms Channel’, they introduce the KrakenSDR and use it to track down the broadcast location of a small airport’s AWOS (Automated Weather Observing System) transmitter.
In the next two videos, Zlati Dimitrov uses a KrakenSDR to track down two transmitters.
In this video, ‘Dacomsat Laboratory’ shows the KrakenSDR being set up in his vehicle and then locating a transmitter.
Next we want to share this talk by Thomas Brinkoetter that shows an overview of how to set up a KrakenSDR system for locating an intermittent interference source.
We also wanted to share a link to this third-party software called ‘KrakenScope’ by GitHub user ‘dotignore’. The software is a desktop mapping application for combining bearing data from multiple KrakenSDRs:
https://github.com/dotignore/KrakenSDR_Desktop/
Finally, we wanted to share a guide created by adrian on our Forums that shows how to install and run our gr-krakensdr GNU Radio blocks on a Windows machine:
https://www.redgo.ch/krakensdr/gr-krakensdr_natively_on_Windows.pdf
There is also a forum post discussing this here:
KrakenSDR Web Mapper Demo
For those potentially interested in using our online KrakenSDR Web Mapper, we’ve created a demo site where you can play around with simulated KrakenSDRs at demo.krakenrf.com.
To get started, click on a KrakenSDR group (moving or stationary), select a VFO output to display (we don’t recommend using All VFOs as that can be confusing), and then click on the Start button. After a few seconds, you will see the output of the group of KrakenSDRs displayed on the map, and then, after a few more seconds, the heatmap will show up.
You can also play around with the Angle Error and Lobe Width which are settings specifically only on the demo site. These settings can be used to simulate real-world conditions so that you can understand how a KrakenSDR system might perform in reality with multipath angle corruption and less-than-optimal array sizes, which increase the bearing lobe’s resolution.
