The Story of GopherTrunk

When I was a kid my parents had an old school analog “police” scanner, well, several actually. When I was really young my father was a volunteer EMT in the small town I grew up in and after that he was heavily involved in the Red Cross disaster response, so the scanner was always on and loud! I always enjoyed listening and feeling like I knew when something was going on. I have many memories of sitting in the living room or kitchen with my Mom (while she crocheted) listening to the scanner when something was happening in our small town.

When I was an adult and had enough money to buy a scanner, Digital Trunking radio systems were taking over. I spent years researching which one I wanted but they either lacked the functionality I needed, had usability issues, or were just too expensive to justify buying them just for fun or nostalgia. I wanted a scanner that could scan all of the different public safety radio systems, be easy to use, and not cost a fortune but that didn’t exist.

Around 2012-13 I got my first RTL-SDR and immediately thought software defined radio (in general) might be able to provide exactly what I was looking for! Over the next 14ish years I tried just about every SDR software available (that worked with the RTL-SDR) but none offered exactly what I was looking for. Just like with the traditional scanners, I couldn’t find one that did what I wanted it to do on the systems and platforms I wanted to do it on.

During those 14 years I tried building my own SDR software for the RTL-SDR with varying degrees of success but never came even close to a functional scanner. I can write code in several languages and I can understand a lot of RF technology but I’m not a developer or an engineer. Nor do I have the time to build such a thing from scratch.

Then last year I saw how good Claude Code was getting at writing code. The catch, they said, is that you need to have an understanding of the language it’s coding in and the software you want to make. I immediately thought about the digital trunking scanner software utilizing the RTL-SDR that I have been wanting for years. At first I held off because of the cost and people were still saying it had issues. Then earlier this year, I used Claude Code for another project and had to upgrade to the max plan. I had a great experience using it to write the code I needed and knew it was time to finally bring my full suite, RTL-SDR digital trunking scanner project to life!

Gemini and Claude have finally given me the ability to create the SDR that I have been looking for. In the end GopherTrunk isn’t just a passion project, it’s deeply personal and nostalgic for me. It involves a lot of my interests but also connects me to my past and now it’s available to the community!