Skip to main content

Installation

Unlike everyone else, I opted for a different type of installation, and did not choose to use a folder under C:\ but instead a folder that lives in my synced OneDrive directory. The reason for this was that I could always have access to it from any machine and make edits if need be without having direct access to the desktop where DSD is running. 

Currently, I have a W11 VM running on my ProxMox host, which is dedicated for DSDPlus. Since this is a Windows VM, I could simply use OneDrive as the home for the DSDPlus installation, run it from there, and then any other computer could make edits to the files as required. When I am on my home network I simply RDP into the VM and change things as needed, or I use a VPN. Sometimes this is overkill when all I need to do is update an alias, or change a frequency. 

My current setup is as follows:

  • RTL-SDR Blog V4 receivers x2
  • Windows 11 VM running on a ProxMox host
    • This has been stripped down to the essentials, search online for debloating scripts to remove what you don't need
    • 10GB of RAM, 128G SSD Space (10GB of RAM isn't needed, but sometimes having it makes things run quicker...)
    • 4 Core CPU
  • DSDPlus FastLane
  • Trunking Recorder
    • This is what I use to listen to the audio/transmissions recorded by DSDPlus, and it comes with a built-in web server
    • Webserver is on port 3000, and on the ProxMox host I have my NGINX reverse proxy forwarding a domain name to the VM's IP and Trunking Recorder port

I simply created a folder in my OneDrive for SDR, then dumped all the installation files from that DSDPFL zip into it. Downloaded all of the ancillary stuff required into it as well, and boom - done. 

There are several DLL files you will need to obtain from the DSDPlus website: https://www.dsdplus.com/dl/DSDPlusDLLs.zip as the instructions say, download and unzip them into your installation folder where everything else is.

Once you unzip the things, look for the DSDPlus.txt file, it's got all the instructions you need. I won't copy/paste all that here as it is updated with new versions, so do your own work and make sure you read through it. 

With all that done, simply fill out your working files:

  • DSDPlus.NETWORKS
  • DSDPlus.SITES
  • DSDPlus.GROUPS
  • DSDPlus.RADIOS
  • DSDPlus.FREQUENCIES

I've got examples of mine for you to see how I've set up monitoring for a Motorola Capacity Plus (Cap+) system, as that is what I am using DSDPlus for. 

Depending on your target monitoring and hardware, execute the .bat files as needed or make your own according to how you want to monitor/record things. Since I'm monitoring a Cap+ system, I don't need a lot of crazy stuff, so I opted to use the 1R.bat in conjunction with FMP24-CC.bat. I created a custom .bat to launch the required stuff at start up with the VM. Here is what I use:

@echo off
REM Launch the first batch file
start "" "C:\your\path\goes\here\DSDPlus\1R.bat"

REM Wait for 3 seconds
timeout /t 3 /nobreak >nul

REM Launch the second batch file
start "" "C:\your\path\goes\here\DSDPlus\FMP24-CC.bat"

REM Close the window when complete
exit

Copy paste that into your own .bat and name it what you want, and obviously edit your path to the files as needed. To get this to run at start up, I opted to create a shortcut to this file, and then move it into the startup folder:

  1. Create a shortcut of the .bat file and move the shortcut to your desktop
  2. Hit the WIN key and type Run (hit enter)
  3. In the search box, enter shell:startup (hit enter) - this should open an explorer window for the Startup folder
  4. Move your .bat shortcut from the desktop to this folder

My 1R.bat has the following:

DSDPlus -r1 -i20001

My FMP24-CC.bat has the following, as I have set some custom flags:

FMP24 -rc -i1 -o20001 -P0.0 -f451.4 -g43.9

For all the other stuff, I use the DSDPlus window to control them. For example, I have per-call audio recording set. I did not use the 1R.bat file for all that, as it seems to save all of my stuff across sessions. I found that I could not get FMP24 to keep my specifications, such as gain and start up frequency whenever it was closed out and restarted, which is why I opted to set them in the .bat file.

As noted earlier, I use Trunking Recorder to collect the audio files, catalog them and present them in some sort of web asccesible server for easy playback. To get that to run at startup, I did the same thing as above by creating a shortcut for it on my desktop and moving it to the startup folder. In it's configuration there is a setting to have it start doing its thing on launch so no manual intervention is required.

Back to top