WaveShark and rtl_433

rtl_433 is the standard for reading ISM devices, and nothing here pretends otherwise: it carries roughly 250 device decoders, WaveShark about 130 device descriptions, and those are verified field for field against rtl_433 25.02 on 97 recordings from its own corpus. If your only job is decoding sensors and you want the widest coverage, run rtl_433.

What WaveShark adds is the rest of the receiver. The same span that is being read for sensors is also being read for aircraft, pagers, digital voice, mesh traffic and anything else in it, and a device that identifies itself becomes a row in a survey with its sightings on a map rather than a line of output.

The two read each other’s captures: --record writes rtl_433 style files, so a burst captured by one is a test fixture for the other.

Where rtl_433 is the better answer

• Roughly 250 device decoders against about 130
• A command line tool that fits in a pipeline and a cron job
• Runs on anything, including very small hardware
• Years of field testing across an enormous device catalogue

Where WaveShark is

• Every other protocol in the same span at the same time
• A window: spectrum, waterfall, envelope, bit slicing and hex for unclaimed bursts
• A device survey with positions, and a WiGLE CSV export
• A packet log that stores samples, so a future decoder gets its chance at an old burst
• A browser version at app.waveshark.io, with the dongle on WebUSB