15 Bucks SDR with DVB-T USB stick (2MSample IQ ) :)

[Henrik_Volkers]

A wonderful hack  to play with:

Search the youtube for

RTLSDR or SDR#

Just tried it with my 14.95EUR LogiLink USB DVBT stick, Zadig driver and SDR# (nightly edition) on W7. A software defined radio spanning <70MHz to >1GHz with 1MHz bandwidth 😄

Nice to poke for EMV issues, listening to FM radio or sit in the plane and listen to the tower/pilot 😉

USB sticks with certain REALTEK USB DVB-T decoder IC and some types of down mixer chips can be switched to a mode where the raw 2MS/S 8bit IQ data is send over the USB

I have no experience with DLL calls, but would love to have a LabVIEW link to that.

http://hackaday.com/tag/rtl-sdr/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73q1p1yOHw

http://sdrsharp.com/

[altenbach]

About two or three weeks ago, I actually found the exact same links. Certainly would be useful to do a poor mans USRP. 😄

Would be cool to be able to tap into it using LabVIEW.

[alipio]

Well, somebody is working on that.

See this link: http://ha5kfu.sch.bme.hu/node/94

It uses rtl_tcp server isntead of calls to DLL but looks quite interesting. Do not know if he will share vi´s.

Cheers.

Alipio.

[Henrik_Volkers]

I was able to demodulate a 40MHz heterodyne laser IF signal with the DVBT-stick , with SDR# rigth out of the box (laser mic 🙂 ) , with LV not in realtime.... (to much load for my tiny DELL430)  but with scaled acceleration output.

The current DAQ for that is a PXI system with a 5124   about 1k times the value, but not really compareable 😉

[Darin.K]

With an assist from the libusb bulk transfer interface, it was pretty darn easy to get this going.  Glad I got my old Elonics E4000 when I did, they are apparently discontinued. 

Here is a local FM radio station:

[Intaris]

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@Darin.K wrote:

With an assist from the libusb bulk transfer interface, it was pretty darn easy to get this going.  Glad I got my old Elonics E4000 when I did, they are apparently discontinued. 

Here is a local FM radio station:

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Scale is weird.

How do you get from a center frequency of 9.2 MHz to a center frequency of 2100?

[Darin.K]

Did not bother to scale axis of power spectrum, point 2048 is center of power spectrum, which is the location of the 92.1 MHz channel. More interested in real time demodulation.

[alipio]

Hello.

Can you post vis to call rtlsdr  DLL please?

TCP runs fine but USB seems better for local use.

Cheers.

Alipio.

[Henrik_Volkers]

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@Darin.K wrote:

Glad I got my old Elonics E4000 when I did, they are apparently discontinued. 

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According to this table

Tuner	Frequency range
Elonics E4000	52 - 2200 MHz with a gap from 1100 MHz to 1250 MHz (varies)
Rafael Micro R820T	24 - 1766 MHz
Fitipower FC0013	22 - 1100 MHz (FC0013B/C, FC0013G has a separate L-band input, which is unconnected on most sticks)
Fitipower FC0012	22 - 948.6 MHz
FCI FC2580	146 - 308 MHz and 438 - 924 MHz (gap in between)

Source: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

the E4000 has the widest possible range ( I got mine for 10EUR incl shipping 🙂 and a FC0013 is also flying around)

However, he HAM guys prefer the R820T, lower range, no gaps and said to be the most sensitive ....

“Buy a $10 radio and a $100 antenna” - Old ham radio saying.

[alipio]

Hi all.

Code for playing wirh Labview and RTLSDR by HA5KFU is available in: http://ha5kfu.sch.bme.hu/sdrlab

Cheers.

Alipio.