sdrtrunk VS Beagle_SDR_GPS

This might be a big ask but I would love some better software for streaming trunked radio systems, I'm using sdrtrunk to stream to broadcastify, but it requires running a whole desktop environment and I feel like it's a ton of overhead for nothing

A second vote for SDRTrunk. I typically don't use a Windows computer, but fired one up to try DSD+, and man, that seemed like a lot of work to get something working that didn't decode traffic all that reliably.

SDR Trunk. It's java so it should work with any OS that supports JVM

Might wanna give SDRTrunk a whirl, I found it infinitely easier to set up than Unitrunker.

SDRtrunk, comes with builtin DMR and other protocol support

It's worth mentioning that for trunked P25 systems, the voice channels are often spread out so they span more spectrum than the ~2.4 MHz bandwidth of an RTL-SDR, so you won't be able to monitor both the control channel and any voice channels that are too far away from it. I have had reasonable success decoding my county's trunked P25 public safety system with sdrtrunk and two RTL-SDRs, but that still only covers about 4.8 MHz of spectrum, so there are still channels that can't be received. I am considering upgrading to an SDR dongle with wider receive bandwidth (some will do 6 or 10 MHz, IIRC) so that sdrtrunk will be able to receive the control channel and any voice channels, and stop telling me it couldn't receive something because it didn't have a tuner available.

If you want to have something similar for use at home, you could take a look at http://kiwisdr.com.

I have one, but you need to hunt down EMI sources, before you can properly use it.

Have you see http://kiwisdr.com/ ?

One of my favorite projects is the KiwiSDR network, which is essentially making radios available online for public use:

http://kiwisdr.com/

http://rx.kiwisdr.com

Your father could be anywhere and enjoy listening from... anywhere? :-)

http://kiwisdr.com/ - Online access to software-defined radios for listening and learning nomenclature as well as a useful SWL tool

find the signal on SDR, kiwisdr.com

For a book look at Gordon West's technician book, for a website hamstudy.org. If you want to listen to HF amateur radio kiwisdr.com, you can also pick up a rtl-sdr for about $25. A great You Tube channel is "Ham Radio Crash Course"

I just checked the map of receivers on http://kiwisdr.com/ and the first Bay Area one I tried (KE6GG out of Daly City, CA) seemed to be able to tune in AM and FM broadcast radio stations.

The project is http://kiwisdr.com/ Regarding closed-source software, people are reverse engineering everything anyway.