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RDS Surveyor, multi-platform RDS decoder

RDS Surveyor icon

RDS Surveyor is being developed by Christophe Jacquet, a radio ehtusiast.

Run RDS Surveyor 2 now in your browser!

Project links:

RDS Surveyor is a complete open-source tool for decoding and analyzing Radio Data System (RDS) data. RDS (also known as RBDS in North America) is a communication protocol for embedding streams of digital information in FM radio broadcasts.

RDS Surveyor comes in two flavors:

RDS Surveyor 2 is currently in beta and it lacks some of RDS Surveyor 1's features. However, as of March 2025, development is active and we expect the missing features to be added in the coming weeks or months.

Supported RDS data sources and hardware

RDS Surveyor can use diverse data sources:

SourceSupport in v1Support in v2
RTL-SDR USB dongles
Si470x-based USB FM tuners (e.g. Silicon Lab's USBFMRADIO)
GNS FM9 TMC receiver
RDS-compatible Video4Linux receivers (on Linux)
Data and clock signals via sound card (e.g. output of TDA 7330)planned
Log files from itself or RDS Spy (both synchronized group data or unsynchronized bitstreams)
Recorded samples of the multiplex (MPX) signal

Supported RDS features

RDS Surveyor implements all basic RDS features, as well as a number of common Open Data Applications (ODAs):

RDS featureSupport in v1Support in v2
Basic program identification: PI, PTY, TP/TA
Program service name (PS), including intelligent handling of scrolling PS
Long program service name (LPS) defined in RDS2
Alternative frequencies (AF)
Clock time (CT)
Radiotext (RT) with RadiotextPlus (RT+) ODA
Enhanced Radiotext (eRT) ODA
Cross-referencing of other networks (EON)
Radio paging (RP)in progress
Traffic Message Channel (TMC) ODAplanned
EN301700 ODA (cross-referencing of DAB from RDS)
RBDS-specific features, e.g. PI-code to callsign decoding
RDS 2 upper streams and ODAsplanned

Contrary to off-the-shelf radio sets that give access to only a subset of RDS features, RDS Surveyor enables the user to analyze all RDS data, at various protocol levels. RDS does not discard groups with errors, instead it tries to interpret groups even when some blocks are missing. This enables RDS Surveyor to decode RDS data very quickly, even with poor reception.

The itended audience for RDS Surveyor is both end users (radio enthusiasts and professionals) who wish to get full access to RDS data, and developers who wish to re-use an RDS decoder as a library. RDS Surveyor is open source; see the respective Github pages for the licenses.

How to help?

Please try and use RDS Surveyor. Then you may:

Screenshot of RDS Surveyor v1
RDS Surveyor v1
Screenshot of RDS Surveyor v2
RDS Surveyor v2

© Christophe Jacquet (contact: <MyFirstName>.<MyLastName>@gmail.com). Impressum (Mentions légales). Last modified on 2025-03-30.