SDR Receivers.

Has anyone got an SDR receiver ?

They're pretty cool to use.

This link below shows how to set up the drivers.

http://sdr-radio.com/Radios/RTL-Dongles

The software.

http://sdr-radio.com/v3_help

Types of Dongles

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/

This SDR from SDRplay, is a much higher quality receiver, obviously more expensive but you don't need to buy an up-converter to listen to the ham radio bands or Commercial Shortwave like you do with the cheap dongles. The SDRplay does 10k to 2 Ghz.

Youll be able to decode Digital Radio on Shortwave called DRM also. Its amazing receiving better than FM quality on Shortwave. There are few stations but DRM for LW/MW/SW is gaining more interest, whether it will ever take off is another matter.

Don't forget you'll need a proper Aerial for the band you're listening to, SW will require a long wire antenna, inverted L or if you live in a noisy environment like in a housing estate , Town etc a magnetic loop antenna on a rotator will give superior results.

Externally mounted is always better, even a random wire strung up between two trees to get started will suffice to get started.

Amalgam

Tracking planes too..

http://makezine.com/projects/make-43/tracking-planes-with-rtl-sdr/

Yep, that's another thing you can do along with receiving Weather satellite images.

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-decoding-meteor-m2-weather-satellite-images-in-real-time-with-an-rtl-sdr/

STB.

Yes I remember when they came out a few years back. They were being discussed as a dvb-t usb proposition with Enigma2 boxes. I have the black one among a variety of different driver usb dvb-t sticks. I had come across them through this website.

I haven't checked recently but no one knew enough in the PLI community about them to write software for e2 boxes, outside the dvb-t driver.

You will see loads of them on ebay by just searching their chipset number RTL2832U.

I believe some Irish guy was among those to have discovered the capabilities of this chipset although I see now that its accredited to a Finnish engineering student.

One of the early developers/hardware hackers, Michael Ossman
http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

SDR receivers are going to be big business I reckon in a few years, though they really already are, the SDrPlay is amazing. Cheap as chips compared to a separate receiver with amazing features and performance you would hardly get on a 1000 Euro dedicated receiver.

My particular interest is Shortwave, LW/Mw and the Amateur radio bands, it's great being able to monitor up to 10 Mhz of radio spectrum without tuning anything, some other receivers can monitor the whole SW 50-30 Mhz spectrum, amazing.

This web based receiver I believe was the first to allow multiple users tune a full 30 Mhz of spectrum.

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

Even ham operators are able to use them with their transceivers.

My SDR needs a proper aerial, we're moving soon and will have the space to install one, I think an Inverted L with 9:1 balun will do the job nicely.

jmcc

Deleted User wrote: »

Has anyone got an SDR receiver ?

Interesting devices. Some of the antennas supplied with them are not much good though but can be used for FM broadcast and aircraft tracking. The standard MCX connector is a bit of a pain as it is it requires an adaptor (typically supplied with some) to change it to SMA (not the best as they can be quite tricky) or other connector. Have been testing two NooElec dongles and one modded sdr. Outside some of the broadcast stuff and 1090 MHz, the antenna issue becomes critical as there's a hell of a lot of interference from ordinary sources like computers and cable TV signals.

The performance of the NooElec dongles seems pretty rock solid. The no-name one had a few problems but that was due to flux on the PCB not being cleaned after soldering. Once that was sorted out, it was OK.

The good thing about messing about with 1090 MHz stuff is that simple antennas are easy to build. A quarter wavelength groundplane is just a few lengths of copper wire and a connector. J poles and Slim Jims are also easy enough to build as are coax collinears.

They are a nice way back into RF work after being out of it for a few years.

Regards...jmcc

Mech1

The Dublin air traffic feed that I supply runs on 2 sdr's and 2 scanners. Great little bits of kit.

jmcc

jmcc wrote: »

Interesting devices. Some of the antennas supplied with them are not much good though but can be used for FM broadcast and aircraft tracking. The standard MCX connector is a bit of a pain as it is it requires an adaptor (typically supplied with some) to change it to SMA (not the best as they can be quite tricky) or other connector. Have been testing two NooElec dongles and one modded sdr. Outside some of the broadcast stuff and 1090 MHz, the antenna issue becomes critical as there's a hell of a lot of interference from ordinary sources like computers and cable TV signals.

The performance of the NooElec dongles seems pretty rock solid. The no-name one had a few problems but that was due to flux on the PCB not being cleaned after soldering. Once that was sorted out, it was OK.

The good thing about messing about with 1090 MHz stuff is that simple antennas are easy to build. A quarter wavelength groundplane is just a few lengths of copper wire and a connector. J poles and Slim Jims are also easy enough to build as are coax collinears.

They are a nice way back into RF work after being out of it for a few years.

Regards...jmcc

Definitely, the antennas supplied by most of these SDR receivers are junk, though most of them are just hacked TV dongles.


Dedicated SDR receivers like the SDR Play are vastly superior in quality.

I'm moving house soon and will have tonnes of space for antennas, I'm probably going to go with an inverted L , for the moment I'm really only interested in 100 Khz-30 Mhz.

SDR Console V 3 allows you to run a server so you can listen to your SDR anywhere. It works brilliantly, I was able to log in from work and tune as if the SDR was plugged into the work laptop.

You can choose whether to have your receiver private or not.

jmcc

Deleted User wrote: »

Definitely, the antennas supplied by most of these SDR receivers are junk, though most of them are just hacked TV dongles.

Yep. But the amazing thing is that they still work.

Dedicated SDR receivers like the SDR Play are vastly superior in quality.

Half tempted to buy one of these. They look very interesting and well designed. The filtering is a very nice element. The filtering would help in a noisy environment.

I'm moving house soon and will have tonnes of space for antennas, I'm probably going to go with an inverted L , for the moment I'm really only interested in 100 Khz-30 Mhz.

Some of the active antenna designs for these frequencies look interesting but it is hard to beat long wires and other designs.

Regards...jmcc