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Building a very low cost satellite tracker for your RTL-SDR
A satellite tracker is a motorized unit that points a directional antenna towards passing satellites. Most satellites are not in a fixed orbit, and will fly over your head a few times a day and will be...
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Decoding the NOAA Weather Satellite Telemetry Beacons
It is well known that the NOAA satellites broadcast weather satellite images which can be received and displayed with an RTL-SDR and computer. What is less known is that there is a telemetry beacon...
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First tests of the LimeSDR with GQRX
The LimeSDR is a new SDR $299 USD currently seeking crowdfunding over on CrowdSupply. At the time of this post the LimeSDR is currently 60% funded, with 29 days left to go. The LimeSDR is a RX/TX...
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Notes on Amateur Radio Astronomy for Beginners
RTL-SDR.com reader Jean Marie Polard (F5VLB) recently wrote in to let us know about a useful document that he has put together which covers beginners amateur radio astronomy. The document includes...
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Sniffing Data from an Implanted Heart Defibrillator
Over on Hackaday a team are attempting to reverse engineer the RF data logging portion of an implanted cardiac defibrillator (ICD) as their Hackaday prize entry. An ICD defibrillator works by...
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Multi-RTL: A GNU Radio Block for Combining and Time Synchronizing Multiple...
The RTL-SDR has a maximum available stable bandwidth of about 2.4 MHz. Many people have had the idea to combine multiple RTL-SDR dongles together to implement a wider band or multi channel RX device,...
View ArticleLeif SM5BSZ’s Testing of the Airspy Mini
Over on YouTube Leif (SM5BSZ) has uploaded two videos showing some of his tests with the new Airspy Mini. Leif is fairly well known within the SDR community for writing the program Linrad and for doing...
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Comparing Home Made Inmarsat Antennas
Over on his blog “coolsdrstuff”, the author has uploaded a new post showing his comparisons of various home made Inmarsat antennas. In his post he tests a tin can helix antenna, a 10-turn helix...
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Testing a Prototype of the Outernet L-Band Downconverter
Outernet are a startup company that hope to revolutionize the way people in regions with no, poor or censored internet connectivity receive information. Their service is downlink only, and runs on C...
View ArticleMonitoring Ionosondes and Creating Ionograms with a USRP and GNU Chirp Sounder
In the HF region between about 0 – 30 MHz it is common to see and hear “chripers” – signals which quickly sweep through the HF frequency band and produce an audible chirp. These chirps are actually...
View ArticleL-Band Reception with an LNA4ALL, Patch Antenna and RTL-SDR
Over on YouTube Adam 9A4QV has uploaded a video showing how good L-band reception can be with only a cheap home made patch antenna, RTL-SDR dongle and LNA4ALL. The video is in response to a question on...
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Slovenian University Student & Security Researcher Almost Jailed for...
Dejan Ornig, a 26 year old student at the University of Maribor’s Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security was recently almost jailed for finding a security flaw in Police TETRA communications in his...
View ArticleMore L-Band Videos from 9A4QV: Testing 2x LNA4ALL + Filter + Patch, Receiving...
Adam 9A4QV has once again uploaded three new videos to YouTube, all related to L-band satellite reception. The first video shows how much L-band reception can be improved by using two LNA4ALL low noise...
View ArticleSDRplay receiving a WPX CW CQ Contest
Over on YouTube user Mile Kokotov has uploaded a video showing him receiving a WPX CQ CW (morse code) contest on his SDRplay RSP. The SDRplay RSP is a $149 USD software defined radio with a tuning...
View ArticleBuilding a DIY Powered USB Hub for using an RTL-SDR on a Raspberry Pi
One problem that sometimes arises when using embedded single board computers like the Raspberry Pi is that they often cannot provide enough current to power devices through the USB port. Over on...
View ArticleUsing the Airspy on an Odroid C2
The Odroid C2 is a $40 single board computer with a 2 GHz ARM-A53 quad core CPU and 2GB of RAM. Compared to a Raspberry Pi 3 it is more powerful and costs about the same. The Airspy R2/Mini is a...
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Review of the Airspy Mini
The Airspy Mini is a recently released $99 USD software defined radio with a tuning range of 24 MHz to 1800 MHz, 12-bit ADC and up to 6 MHz of bandwidth. The Mini is the younger brother of the $199 USD...
View ArticleA Demonstration of the RTL-SDR Receiving WiFi and 2.4 GHz ISM with a Modded...
Back in April we posted about how KD0CQ found that he could receive signals up to 4.5 GHz with an RTL-SDR by using a $5 downconverter for DirecTV called the SUP-2400. The RTL-SDR can only receive up to...
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IF Average SDR# Plugin Updated
The IF Average tool is a RTL-SDR compatible plugin for SDR# which allows you to plot an average of the current spectrum shown in SDR#. This is especially useful for radio astronomers who often need to...
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Broadcasting DVB-S2 with the LimeSDR
The LimeSDR is a $299 USD software defined radio that has RX and TX capabilities, a tuning range of 100 kHz – 3.8 GHz, a 12 bit ADC and up to 61.44 MHz worth of bandwidth. It is currently seeking...
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