Sdr#

[dr pepper]

Does anyone else have one of these?, what do you think to it.
I built the kit bversion, the one without the upconverter, hf is directly sampled.
Apart from the tiny little wires soldered to the chip it went together fairly well.
It seems to work down to vlf and up into uhf reasonably well.
Certainly for the price of a takeout its not bad at all.

 

[DerStrom8]

Supplier Deviation Request?

 

[dr pepper]

Sorry yes Sdr is a software package not a piece of hardware.
I meant the generic usb black box receiver available from china.
The kit is a pcb with some comps, and a usb dongle you take to bits and insert the pcb from it into the pcb for the receiver.

 

[MikeMl]

I use SDR# (the software). I have used it with the original DTV dongle (100Mhz to ~1GHz). I also have used it with the Airspy SDR receiver (24MHz to 2GHz). I also use it with the RFSpace SDR-IQ (DC to ~30MHz), which I primarily use as a Panadapter with my Yaesu FT950 HF rig.

 

[nsaspook]

They work fine in Linux too but the RF front-end leaves much to be desired with the cheap units. Combined with software like GNU-radio and GQRX it's a nice system.
https://gqrx.dk/

 

[dr pepper]

As far as I can tell they all use the same rtl dongle, the kit I got came with a dongle, I had to extract its pcb and insert it into the pcb that came with the kit.
Yes the batter ones have an improved front end, and usually a tcxo.
For a noob though these are pretty good, also handy as a piece of test gear.
Mine works down to 100kc according to its blurb, but I can get Vlf sub transmitters on 35kc no problem.
Seems to be processing power hungry, I spose thats the idea of the original dongle, lob as much of the signal handling over to the processor to keep hardware simplicity high and cost low.

 

[WB4IVG]

I have several SDR units and several Software packages. I find that most SDR boxes are about the same unless you get into units costing 3 to 4 figures at which time lots more design and hardware come into play. The software, on the other hand, is pretty much similar in all units, all being processor hungry! I have used some of the Shareware software on the $1000.00 class hardware and it works not much different than it does on the $10 Dongle! SDR# works well on the ones it runs on, HDSDR works on almost everything out there. The high dollar software and some of the hardware is tied almost inseparably to its counterparts such as the HP, Agilent, Keysight systems which I have used and one which I own. HP or whatever they are calling themselves this week seems to want to hold you up for a "LICENSE!" for different frequency ranges even after you buy their WAY OVERPRICED packages. I for one will not ever go down that road again. At the time I bought the Agilent package, as I needed it for a contract, but since I have bought a Signal Hound for my current efforts. That said the SDR-Play does 90% of what I need in this venue and costs less than $200 U.S. and can be had for under $100 U.S. if you do some looking around. Out of the box, the SDR-Play does what every dongle claims to do without any soldering or tinkering around. I love to solder and tinker around so there is a lot of pleasure and feeling of accomplishment to be had going the Dongle path not to speak of saving a hundred dollars or so. However, the SDR-Play has one thing the Dongles are sorely lacking that is tuned frontend filters that are switched in according to what band you are operating it in, almost eliminating image issues whatsoever. This one thing made me buy the SDR-Play while I have built tuneable frontends for the Dongles there is a lot to be said for the ease of just changing frequency without having to retune the frontend, also if you want to spend just a little more you can get the more expensive version which also has builtin antenna switching with multiple antenna connections.
Laurin WB4IVG

 

[MikeMl]

I concur on the SDR-Play... Best bang for the buck.