World's Least Expensive Software Defined Radio

[RadioRay]

I recently purchased a 'dongle' on E-Bay, iriginally designed for watching digital TV and such.  I don't have any use for that, but I bought it because the thing can be used with FREEware as a VHF through micro-wave, multi-mode  radio receiver!  The RTL dongle cost me about $17 and the software is "  SDR#  ".  Right out of the box, it displays up to 2 MHz of spectrum, you tune with the mouse and it's great for seeing all thos weird signal out there.  Next I ordered a converter so that I could receive HF frequencies from 'ham-it-up  company.  They had dongles and the converter. 

WOW!  Please, rather than asking me about this, just go to You Tube and search "  RTL SDR dongle  " and watch the videos.

http://youtu.be/V73q1p1yOHw

For those who have never used an SDR, it will blow your mind about 'tuning the dial'.


>de RadioRay ..._ ._

[Rob_ma]

SDR is very interesting and not very expensive in most cases. You can use a receiver online in the Netherlands to try it out. Hundreds of users can use it simultaneously and listen to different parts of the spectrum. It can display 30 MHz on the waterfall display so you can see signals all across the spectrum. After playing with it for a little while you can actually see what kind of music a shortwave station is playing -  rock, classical, Asian, or talk -  just by the pattern of the waterfall. You can also read CW on screen as well. Lots of information can be gleaned from that display.

Try it out. It will give you a feel for what SDR can do in your own shack.

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

- Rob

[madball13]

Wow this is pretty amazing. I have a few buddies not ready to jump on the ham band wagon but this is going to be a great intro and at least i will be able to get messages out to them.

[Rob_ma]

I ordered an SDR and up-converter from Nooelec after using that receiver. It sold me! :)

- Rob

[gil]

I might get into it, with a SoftRock receiver. Being a programmer, I am thinking of writing an SOS CW detector. It would listen for emergency calls and send an SMS message to my phone if one is detected. I don't know when I'd have the time to write it, but it would be a neat project. It could also detect if anyone is calling me.. I know CW skimmer can do something like that, but I am thinking of something simpler. I would write it in Python and make it available as a Python module, open source. No graphics, command line only.

Gil.

[KC9TNH]

....and it's great for seeing all those weird signal out there.

Are you regressing? Did you spend too much time plugged into the big golf ball?  :-X

j/k  ;D

Seriously thanks for the link to the video, very interesting.
I can think of a couple of uses for this immediately. Want to locate a phantom something-or-other that seems to be bothering your ham setup? Could be useful because what's bothering you might actually be a harmonic of the real culprit.  Another might be detection of other, shall we say, control signals of equipment certainly operating way above the typical ham bands, but which one might want to know about.

Gil, if you want to humor your inner programmer, there seems (to me anyway) to be some work being done in this area, but very platform specific (SOS detect = triggering SMS stuff).

[gil]

Well, I just ordered one on Ebay! I want to do some coffee-shop scanning!

Gil.