Tested hardware
What RailSpotting receivers run on today. If you’ve tried something else, please report it (as an issue) with what worked and what didn’t.
Radios
| Hardware | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5 (RTL2832U, R820T2) | in use | EOT, ITC, VHF and HOT jobs; the reference dongle |
| Other RTL2832U dongles with an R820T, R820T2 or R828D tuner | expected to work | the receiver supports any dongle librtlsdr does; tuner names E4000, FC0012, FC0013 and FC2580 are recognised too |
| Uniden SR30C scanner, with its CP2104 USB programming cable | in use | optional. Works with Linux’s and macOS’s built-in drivers (no extra driver) |
Computers
| Hardware | System | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Intel Celeron J4125 mini PC (4 cores, 2 GB RAM for the container) | Proxmox VE, Debian 12 LXC | two dongles and speech recognition, in production since October 2026 |
| Apple Silicon Mac | macOS 13 or later | the menu bar app (in development) |
| Google Pixel 9a | Android 17 | the Android app, one dongle over USB OTG |
Not supported
- Intel Macs: the macOS app is for Apple Silicon only.
- 32-bit systems: not tested.
- Raspberry Pi: not tested yet. A Pi 4 or 5 should run the receiver, but speech recognition will be slow on it.