Listening to the Radio with Rust
Talkat RustConf 2026 · on Wednesday, 2026-09-09· at 16:00· Room 511 | Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Palais des Congrès de Montréal·
summary
A $30 RTL‑SDR dongle (R820T2 tuner + RTL2832U ADC) digitizes 960 kIQ samples/s which Rust code filters and demodulates into FM audio (filter → FM demod via conjugate multiply → deemphasis), AM audio (magnitude → DC block), and ADS‑B messages on 1090 MHz. A 7 cm antenna and Raspberry Pi run an open source app Skyward on a Raspberry Pi that decodes 112‑bit frames (120 μs bursts, 24‑bit CRC) and stores tracks in SQLite; using alternate decoders boosts captures from 517 to 3,310 messages per file.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction and background
- 1:12Demo overview and FM radio
- 3:09Hardware and IQ samples
- 8:33Demodulation fundamentals
- 12:29Building an FM receiver
- 18:16Why Rust for real-time SDR
- 18:37AM radio pipeline
- 21:29Time signal radio station
- 22:57ADS-B aircraft tracking
- 26:10Decoding ADS-B messages
- 33:28Summary and dependencies
- 35:33Q&A and closing
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