Thursday, 15 November 2012

Budget SDR receiver

Over the past few months various hams have been reporting success with budget SDR receivers that started out in life as a TV or DAB tuner. After a few weeks of procrastinating I have purchased myself one of these little devices from an ebay trader called cosycave. I ordered a RTL2832 R820T version that was shipped for just under £15.

The usb stick looks very 'budget' and has that tell tale squeak of parts that don't quite fit together. But if it does the job then I'm more than happy. Various people have reported being able to all sorts of things with these including using up converters to get the hf spectrum as well as the stock 25MHz to 1800MHz

https://www.cosycave.co.uk/img/p/220-607-thickbox.jpg


Installation of the stick isn't too tricky and made even easier from this seller as all the right software(SDR#, driver etc) is supplied with the dongle. The only issues I experienced were with the installation of non signed drivers in windows 8. This can be overcome very easily and within a few minutes (actually with all the mucking about I would allocate about an hour and you won't be upset if it only takes you 10 minutes!)


The end result is a simple and budget method of accessing SDR. There is scope to do all sorts with this tool. I managed to hear a few APRS packets, FM broadcast stations and a 144MHz beacon. Although I do have to report that you do need a PC with a bit of 'Umpf'. My aging Nettop was able to run the software but the CPU was on full speed and the audio wasn't that great. a new Windows 8 i3 managed it without even noticing what was happening.


If you'd like a tinker then I can recommend it. Tim, G4VXE has all the info you'll need to get started with it on his blog. There are a few useful posts there or a Google will be able to assist.

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