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Comparing RTL-SDR’s on L-Band Reception, Tuner Temperatures and Passive Cooling
Over on Reddit user MaxWorm has been doing some experiments with comparing various RTL-SDR dongles on L-band (1 – 2 GHz) reception. Previously we wrote a tutorial on decoding Inmarsat signals which are...
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Passively Cooling the RTL-SDR with a Thermal Gap Pad
John Mills recently wrote in to us at RTL-SDR.com to show us how he cools his RTL-SDR by using a thermal gap pad stuck to the entire bottom of the RTL-SDR PCB. A thermal gap pad is a soft pliable...
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Another L-Band Antenna Build and comparing L-Band reception on the RTL-SDR,...
Over on Reddit user killmore231 has made a post showing his comparison of L-Band reception with RTL-SDR, HackRF and SDRplay software defined radios. killmore231 built the L-band patch antenna which...
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RTL-SDR Heat Dissipation as seen by a Thermal Camera
The RTL-SDR is known to get quite hot during operation and when it gets too hot reception of frequencies over 1.2 GHz can be degraded. Marko Cebokli wrote into us at RTL-SDR.com to show us some thermal...
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An RTL-SDR Phase Correlative Direction Finder
Over on YouTube user Tatu Peltola has uploaded a video showing his RTL-SDR based phase correlative direction finder in action. This set up uses three RTL-SDR dongles and three antennas to measure phase...
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Receiving Digital Amateur TV from the ISS with an RTL-SDR
The international space station (ISS) is currently testing transmission of a DVB-S digital video signal. At the moment only a blank test pattern is transmitted, but one day they hope to be able to...
View ArticleHacking GSM Signals with an RTL-SDR and Topguw
The ability to hack some GSM signals has been around for some time now, but the steps to reproduce the hack have been long and difficult to set up. Recently RTL-SDR.com reader Bastien wrote into us to...
View ArticleHak5: Hacking Wireless Doorbells and Software Defined Radio tips
On this weeks episode of Hak5, a popular electronics and hacking YouTube show, the presenters talk about reverse engineering and performing replay attacks on wireless devices such as a doorbell. They...
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An Unfiltered ADS-B co-op: ADSBexchange
Recently Dan, a reader of RTL-SDR.com wrote in to let us know about a new web project he’s started called adsbexchange.com. ADSBexchange is similar to services like FlightRadar24.com and...
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SDR-J Now Compatible with the Raspberry Pi 2
The popular software DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) decoder SDR-J has recently been updated and can now run on the Raspberry Pi 2. In addition the author has also added experimental DRM decoding...
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Creating a DIY 88-108 MHz FM Trap
One of the most problematic strong signals you can encounter is regular 88 – 108 MHz broadcast FM stations. They transmit at high power and can cause overloading and intermodulation problems on simple...
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Building a Ham Transceiver with an RTL-SDR, Raspberry Pi and Rpitx
A few days ago we posted about RpiTx, a piece of software that allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi into a multi purpose transmitter by modulating the output on one of the GPIO pins. Now over on...
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Spektrum: New RTL-SDR Spectrum Analyzer Software
Recently a reader of RTL-SDR.com, Pavel wrote in to let us know about a new program called “Spektrum” which he has written. Spektrum runs on Windows and Linux and turns an RTL-SDR dongle into a...
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Improving Reception with the Stock RTL-SDR Antenna by Building a Corner...
Last week a reader of RTL-SDR.com wrote into us to let us know about some experiments that he had been performing with the telescopic stock antennas provided in our RTL-SDR dongle packages. The reader...
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A modified dump1090 with ADS-B Heatmap and Range Alititude View
Dump1090 is one of the most popular ADS-B decoders that is used together with the RTL-SDR dongle. ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependant Surveillance Broadcast and is a system used by aircraft that...
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Meteor M-N1 Satellite Wakes up from the Dead
RTL-SDR.com reader Happysat recently wrote in with some news. A few days ago a weather satellite image decoding enthusiast from Argentina was waiting for a pass of the Russian Meteor M-N2 satellite...
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An RTL-SDR Based Smartwatch for Detecting Objects Touched by the Wearer
Disney Research have just released a paper describing an RTL-SDR based smart watch that they’ve developed a proof of concept for. The smart watch is unique in that it can be used to actually detect the...
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Using an RTL-SDR and Broadcast FM Radio RDS Signals to improve WiFi Networking
The performance of WiFi networks can depend heavily on how crowded the WiFi channels are in your area. For example when your neighbours start streaming a movie over their own separate WiFi network, it...
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Using the GPIO Ports on the RTL2832U Chip
The RTL-SDR uses the RTL2832U chip as its ADC and USB interface processing chip. It also has 8 GPIO (General Purpose IO) ports available which are by default unused by the original DVB-T dongle...
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SpyVerter Upconverter now for sale
The team behind the Airspy software defined radio (as well has the popular SDR# software package) have just released the SpyVerter upconverter for sale. Upconverters shift HF frequencies (0 – 30 MHz)...
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