The radio you point at the 11 m band, or at a shortwave station that hasn't said anything in six hours.
Everything upstream SDRoxide does, plus the parts a listener and a CB operator actually want: WSJT-CB callsigns and channel plans, the broadcast schedule, the reception log, and a screen that works on a phone.
Download Brown Read the manual
Why this exists
One hobby. Everybody who touches a radio.
Somebody is sitting on 11 metres with a handheld radio. No licence, no exam, no callsign to be proud of — and they are a radio operator in every sense that matters. Somewhere else a licensed station is working FT8 across Europe, and a third person is listening to a shortwave station at two in the morning because hearing a country they have never heard is worth getting up for.
That is one hobby. It has never felt like one, because the software has split it along lines that have nothing to do with it: by licence, by band, by which club you belong to. The listener — the person who tunes, watches and learns — is usually handed the bare minimum. A citizen-band operator gets a program that was never really built for the band they are on. And the tools that would let any of them share what they have found, or bring someone else in, mostly do not exist.
If you handle a radio, you should have the right tools for it — and the hobby should be worth enjoying, worth sharing, and worth promoting in all the best ways it can be.
That is what Brown is for. The 11 m work is not a favour to the licence-free band; the listening side is not a consolation prize for people without a licence. They are the same argument: give whoever is on the air the tools they would have if they were the audience a program was designed around. A receiver a listener can actually learn on. A band a CB operator is treated as though it mattered. A station that decodes what everyone else hears.
Two builds exist because upstream and this one disagree about who the program is for. We are not asking anyone to choose sides — upstream is a fine program with a fine maintainer, and this fork has no argument against it. We are simply carrying the other half of the hobby, and it needs somewhere to live.
Which build am I?
Both builds install a program called sdroxide. That is the whole reason this page exists.
Run this and read the line
sdroxide --version
SDR Oxide Brown … 2.0.12_brown ← Brown, this site
SDR Oxide … 1.6.10 ← upstream, a different program
The title bar and Settings → General both show it too. If yours does not say _brown, you are running upstream and this page is not about your build.
What's different
Brown is upstream plus this. Nothing upstream has been taken away.
11 m as a two-way band
WSJT-CB interop and channel plans, FT8 working 19 callbook calls, the wide CB grammar the community has outgrown, and the transmit etiquette that goes with it.
The listener's side
Broadcast schedule from EiBi, Aoki or HFCC · reception log with QSL tracking · time-shift replay · scheduled recordings · ECSS · signal identification.
Digital broadcast
DAB/DAB+ decoded and played, with station name, programme type and MOT slideshow.
Working the radio
Contest logger · ACARS · KNOWN window (which hashes this station can resolve) · a real iambic CW keyer that keys your rig.
The screen
Detachable windows you can put on a second monitor · saved workspaces · a phone and tablet layout · a browser client that signs in once.
Cheap receivers
The ATS Mini and other sound-card-only boards are supported as listening receivers, alongside the RTL-SDR, RSP1, HackRF and the rest.
On the 11 metres
The citizens' band used as the two-way band it is — FT8 on channel 26, the WSJT-CB callsigns nobody else decodes, and the channel plans that go with them.
Download
Windows, macOS and Linux. A release each Friday, with a nightly in between.
- Windows — the
.msiinstalls as SDR Oxide Brown, separate from any upstream install you already have. - macOS / Linux — download and run; the package names are shared with upstream, so install Brown on its own.
- Browser — connect to your own station's server from any device, and sign in once for all its radios.
Get help
Questions, reports and pictures — all welcome.
Forum
The forum. Questions, ideas, show-and-tell.
Open the forum →
Bug reports
Tell us the version and the radio. It's the one thing we can't guess.
Report a bug →
Quick starts
CB, FT8 on 11 m, SSTV and listening, in English and three more.
Read them →
Upstream
Brown is a build of SDRoxide by dividebysandwich. If you want upstream's build rather than this one, that link is the right place — and its own site is sdroxide.com. Please don't report Brown's problems there.