A Cool Recorder For The Afedri SDR-net

All the SDR software packages supporting the Afedri SDR-net can do RF recordings, and to a varying degree scheduling is possible too. But if the main purpose is recording and not live listening, you might find yourself wanting just a simple recorder. Well, the Perseus SDR has its Mestor, and now the Afedri SDR-net has its Afedrec! It was developed by Vasiliy Gokoyev and made available through the Afedri SDR-net Yahoo reflector.

Afedrec is a character based application, and at that it takes some time to put all the parameters in (and to avoid the syntax errors). Looking for a way to make a one-click recording, I turned to my old friend System Scheduler which had proved to be a very reliable application for doing G31DDC scheduled recordings.

Afedrec in the CMD window. Each dot represents 10 MB of data.

This turned out to be a very good idea indeed. Programming System Scheduler to make recordings of various lengths (or various center frequencies or various sample rates) is quite straightforward. When I open System Scheduler, I can select the recording I want to make, and select the Play button. Of course, I can also set up automated scheduled recordings.

Programming the Afedrec

When Afedrec is recording, you can play back previous recordings with Spectravue. Apparently this is not possible with SDR-Radio, because it holds a UDP socket open and by default the second connection is not allowed.

Afedrec is extremely gentle on the CPU. On my i5-2310 2.9 GHz system, the CPU load when running at 1333 kHz sample rate is 1 % or less, while SDR-Radio and Spectravue both use around 7 % CPU. Afedrec recordings can be played back on SDR-Radio, Spectravue, Winrad and HDSDR.

If you want to do scheduled recordings with the Afedri SDR-net, or a one-off recording without monitoring (for instance a full hour recording), the Afedrec/System Scheduler combination is hard to beat.