Mellow Elephant

Mellow Elephant is an application which uses old radio scanners such as the Uniden BC-780-XLT (or similar) to create a database of spectrum utilization. The database is created by mechanically stepping through the spectrum and observing signal strength. Sampling continues for an extended period. Continuous emitters should be observed on every pass, while transient emitters might take awhile to discover.

This image depicts my current deployment strategy, I use a Raspberry Pi 3 running mellow-elephant to control a BC-780-XLT via RS-232 and a USB adapter. Here is the actual equipment.

Here is a sample of the collected output (my local FM broadcast band)

Ready to put an old radio to work? Find more on github at https://github.com/guycole/mellow-elephant