Introduction: SMART INSTALL Rtl-wmbus Receiver ON WINDOWS WORKSTATION AND VMWARE WITH RTL SDR

By GiamMa-based researchers

rtl-wmbus: software defined receiver for Wireless-M-Bus with RTL-SDR quick and easy installation.


Tools used:

  • VMware Workstation Player
  • GNU Radio Live SDR Environmento
  • xaelsouth/rtl-wmbus

Install Requirements:

Windows system machine with 4gb of ram and dual core processor, hackrf or rtl sdr device.

Step 1: Pre Installation

Pre Installation

  • Download GNU Radio Live SDR Environment 3.7.11
  • Download VMware Workstation Player
  • Install VMware Workstation Player
  • Start VMware Workstation Player
  • Create a new virtual machine , installer disc image file (iso) with GNU Radio Live SDR Environment image
  • Open virtual machine
  • Download xaelsouth-rtl-wmbus-master.zip from Link: https://github.com/xaelsouth/rtl-wmbus
  • Install rtl-wmbusDecoder

Step 2: Installation

installation rtl-wmbus:

Download xaelsouth-rtl-wmbus-master.zip from Link: https://github.com/xaelsouth/rtl-wmbus

Unpack the source code

Open terminal to the top level directory rtl-wmbus-master and insert command:

make

Step 3: Running

Open terminal to the top level directory rtl-wmbus-master and then use one of these three options:

To save IQ-stream on disk and decode them off-line:
rtl_sdr samples.bin -f 868.9M -s 1600000cat samples.bin | build/rtl_wmbus

To run continuously:

rtl_sdr -f 868.9M -s 1600000 - 2>/dev/null | build/rtl_wmbus

To count "good" (no 3 out of 6 errors, no checksum errors) packets:

cat samples.bin | build/rtl_wmbus 2>/dev/null | grep "[T,C]1;1;1" | wc -l

Carrier-frequency given at "-f" must be set properly. With my DVB-T-Receiver I had to choose carrier 50kHz under the standard of 868.95MHz. Sample rate at 1.6Ms/s is hardcoded and cannot be changed.

samples2.bin is a "life" example with two devices received.