VibeServer

Turn an SDR into a network receiver for the VibeSDR apps and any browser.
Current package: 2.0.0-7 (arm64)

Debian / Raspberry Pi OS — 64-bit ARM

Tested on Debian 13 (trixie) and Raspberry Pi OS on a Pi 500. Anything arm64 running Debian or Ubuntu should work.

64-bit only, in practice. The DSP's NEON path is gated on __aarch64__, and a 32-bit userland silently loses all of it — roughly 13× slower on the same hardware.

1. Install

Copy and paste the whole block. Nothing else needs installing — apt pulls in every library VibeServer needs.

curl -fsSL https://apt.vibesdr.net/KEY.gpg \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/vibesdr.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vibesdr.gpg] https://apt.vibesdr.net stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vibesdr.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vibeserver

Log out and back in now. The install adds you to the plugdev group so the radio can be opened without root, and group membership only takes effect on a new login. Skip this and the next step will report no radio.

2. Set it up

vibeserver

That opens a short text wizard: give the receiver a name, say roughly where it is, pick the radio, and set an admin password. When you finish, it enables and starts the service for you — there is no separate command to run.

3. Open it in a browser

http://<the address the wizard printed>:48000

That is the receiver itself — waterfall, audio, decoders — and the same page the VibeSDR apps talk to. On the same network, http://vibeserver.local:48000 usually works too.

★ The waterfall will look quiet at first, and that is deliberate

A new install starts the radio at minimum gain, in manual mode. That is a choice, not a fault: an unknown antenna on an unknown band can overload a front end the moment it is switched on, and a receiver that starts safe and sounds quiet is far easier to recover from than one that starts hot and distorts everything.

Open the menu and bring the gain up until the noise floor lifts and signals appear. Whatever you set is remembered, and upgrades never change a gain you have touched.

If you have an SDRplay RSP

apt install cannot fetch the SDRplay driver and this is not an oversight: SDRplay distribute it under their own licence and we are not permitted to redistribute it. RTL-SDR and Airspy HF+ need nothing extra.

# https://www.sdrplay.com/downloads  →  "API/HW Driver for Linux (ARM64)"
chmod +x SDRplay_RSP_API-*.run && sudo ./SDRplay_RSP_API-*.run
systemctl status sdrplay_apiService     # should be active

Install it whenever you like — before or after VibeServer. If you add an RSP later, sudo systemctl restart vibeserver is enough; the driver is loaded at runtime.

Updating

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Your settings survive and the service restarts on the new binary. The admin page has an Install updates button that does the same thing from a browser.

Prefer a single file?

Install the .deb with apt install ./… — with the ./ — so apt still resolves the dependencies. Never dpkg -i: it does not resolve them, and leaves you part-installed.

sudo apt install ./vibeserver_2.0.0-7arm64.deb

macOS

A signed, notarised build — download, open, and it runs without a Gatekeeper argument.

Latest release →

Source

VibeServer is built from the VibeSDR tree — the same DSP engine, decoders and protocol the apps use, which is why a fix in one reaches all of them.

github.com/Stuey3D/VibeSDR · GPL-3.0