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Dave Hayes edited this page Jun 2, 2026 · 1 revision

Here are some notes for people who are specifically trying to run solid-sdr-server on a Raspberry Pi.

Which build should I use?

Use whatever matches your OS. Try something like this at the command line:

uname -m

Based on the output, you'd use:

Output SolidSDR Build
armv7l linux-armv7
aarch64 linux-arm64

If you're setting up your Pi specifically to run solid-sdr-server, choose a 64-bit OS. In my testing, arm64 remains usable much closer to the limits of the hardware than armv7 does.

General Server Performance

The biggest consumer of performance in solid-sdr-server is large numbers of UDP packets. These are the most demanding things for server resources:

  1. DAX IQ streams
  2. DAX streams
  3. Panadapter data
  4. Waterfall data
  5. Remote Audio

If you're noticing the server is having trouble keeping up, there are a few things you can try.

  • Reduce DAX IQ rate, or disable entirely. DAX IQ is very expensive, and most Pi-style SBCs will struggle with it.
  • Don't enable DAX streams unless you need them.
    • Ideally, you only want to use DAX for digital modes (FreeDV, WSJT-X, etc)
    • While you can use DAX for phone modes, Remote Audio is much more lightweight and will generally be a better experience
  • Reduce Panadapter FPS (default is 25)
  • Increase Waterfall line duration (default is 80ms)
    • Note, this setting works in reverse of how the "rate" control in SmartSDR does! SmartSDR uses a 0-100 "rate" or speed value, while SolidSDR shows you the actual line duration in milliseconds.
  • Remote Audio is very lightweight compared to everything else on this list, but you could disable if it isn't needed.

Raspberry Pi 3/4

You can run solid-sdr-server on a Pi 3 or 4, but there are some caveats. These CPUs are missing the aes instruction set, which severely limits their performance.

In my testing a Pi 3 is generally able to handle a reasonably sized panadapter and waterfall (e.g. a full 1080p screen) at default settings (25 FPS, 80ms line duration) with remote audio, plus DAX TX and one channel of DAX RX enabled. Any more than that and it begins to struggle. The Pi 4 has the same CPU limitation as the Pi 3, but it's much faster in general, so it can handle a bit more.

Raspberry Pi 5

The Pi 5 includes the aes instruction set, and as such should perform very, very well running solid-sdr-server. It will probably only start to run into problems with DAX IQ streams.

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