VibeSDR Jr

VibeSDR Jr is a complete software-defined radio receiver that runs on your Apple Watch. Not a remote control for a phone in your pocket — the watch makes its own connection, does its own decoding and plays its own audio. Leave the handset at home.

Turn the Digital Crown to tune. The spectrum and waterfall run live on the wrist, in colour, at a frame rate you can actually read a band with. Press and hold for the menu, and everything else is a tap away.

WHAT IT RECEIVES

Jr is a client, so it needs a receiver to listen to — either one of your own on your network, or one of the thousands of public ones already out there. It speaks VibeServer, OpenWebRX, KiwiSDR and FM-DX Webserver, and it ships with a directory of public servers, so there is something to listen to within seconds of installing.

VibeServer is your own receiver. It is built into the VibeSDR phone app and available free for macOS — plug in an RTL-SDR, an Airspy HF+ or an SDRplay RSP and it is yours.

MODES AND DECODERS

USB, LSB, AM, SAM, FM, NFM and wide FM in stereo, plus CW upper and lower. DAB, and an ADS-B view that plots the aircraft talking overhead.

ON THE WRIST

Bookmarks, synced with the VibeSDR phone app through iCloud. A band plan, so you know what you are looking at. Bandwidth, squelch, gain and the receiver's own hardware controls — including the LNA, IF gain and notches an SDRplay RSP actually has, rather than a dongle's single slider pretending to be them. Background audio, so it keeps playing when you drop your wrist. And a link meter that tells you the truth about the connection.

VibeSDR Jr is open source under the GPLv3. The engine underneath it, VibeDSP, is our own — the same one that runs the phone app, so a waterfall you set up in one turns up looking the same on the other.

Requires a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, and a receiver to connect to.