A $20 Software Defined Radio For GNU Radio

An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Dobb's shows how to take a $20 USB TV dongle and use it as a wide-range software defined radio using GNU Radio." See also the OscomSDR project, and SDR#, an MIT licensed program for debugging software defined radios.

Comments

More info

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit also has a section devoted to these dongles: http://www.reddit.com/r/rtlsdr

A list of USB tuners capable of doing this and where to get them:
http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/s6ddo/rtlsdr_compatibility_list_v2_work_in_progress/

Re:Going up...

[Anonymous Coward]

These super-cheap little dongles are *terrible* performers. They suffer from de-sense when nearby strong stations transmit, tend to have I/Q balance problems, and so on.

You want good performance from an SDR, you're not going to get it for $20. Providing the dynamic range you need to prevent desense and intermod isn't that easy, nor is providing the sample rate you need to deal with a broad swatch of the receive spectrum at one time at the same time you keep that dynamic range.

The cost will be several times that (at least.) And there are units on the market (See RFSPACE) that are hundreds of dollars and even over a thousand, but oh, man, once you use one, you'll know why. I have an SDR-IQ (and write free support software for SDRs, including that one) and I live and breathe these things on a day to day basis.

Slashdot is WAAAAY behind..

[LVSlushdat]

Geez.. Slashdot is *just* now finding out about these? There's been an info page over on Reddit regarding these for literally months. Darned thing work fine for ham radio 2m and 440 repeater monitoring, plus covers like 64-1700mhz.. http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR.. Sure, they have their problems, but for $20-$25, WHO THE HELL CARES??