New drivers for the SDRPlay released: No more frequency gap

The SDRPlay is a $149 USD software defined radio with a 12-bit ADC, 8 MHz of bandwidth and a 100 kHz to 2 GHz tuning range. It is a good upgrade to the RTL-SDR and can be considered as a competitor to the Airspy SDR. 

One of the initial cons of the SDRPlay was that it had a tuning gap from 380 MHz to 420 MHz. The gap was due to hardware limitations and had nothing to do with censorship. However, now the SDRPlay team have released a new API which fixes these limitations and can fully close the gap.

Along with this update they have also released a new EXTIO driver file with the following improvements:

• Implementation of a selectable 1st LO frequency for the block converter. This will apply to frequencies below 60MHz (up-converted) and between 250MHz and 420MHz (down-converted). This allows full coverage between 100kHz and 2GHz in AUTO mode or the re-position of interferes at the expense of coverage range 

• Added a down conversion routine to convert Low IF modes to Zero IF modes for compatibility in SDR interfaces. IF bandwidths below 1.536MHz supported choice of IF Frequency and sample rate are restricted. 

• Added Options to control the DC offset compensation mode used by the tuner. Available modes are Static, Periodic, One-Shot and Continuous 

• Improved robustness when dynamically changing between IF modes and sample rates

The new drivers can be downloaded from sdrplay.com/platforms.html.