Tysonpower Reviews A Cheap 15€ DAB/DAB+ USB Receiver Dongle that Generates an MP3 Stream
Thank you to Tysonpower who wanted to share his review of a cheap 15€ DAB/DAB+ receiver USB dongle that he found on eBay.de (we also found the same device on eBay.com for US$23.99). The device is not an SDR, but it receives BAND III DAB/DAB+ at 160-240 MHz and generates an MP3 stream which can be played back on any MP3 capable device such as a PC, single board computer or car head unit.
His review notes that the dongle works well. When you plug it in the device shows up as a storage device. You then simply press a button to automatically search for DAB+ channels, and then choose one of the mp3 stream files that will show up to play live DAB+ audio on your device. In his video he also gives a quick tear down, showing that it uses a FCI FC8080 demodulator and a MVSilicon 32-bit Micro with audio FFT accelerator.
While RTL-SDR dongles can also be used to receive DAB+ cheaply with software like SDR-J and welle.io, this may be a simpler method since it can be used on any device that can play MP3s.
Note that Tysonpowers video is narrated in German, with English subtitles. He also has a short blog post with images from the tear down.
![[EN subs] DAB+ für nur 15€ Nachrüsten! - Digitalradio für alle MP3 fähigen Geräte mit USB](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FiCf-Ks0hFbI%2F0.jpg)
For those looking for this product, it is no longer available (that I could find) in this version, however Caliber makes a similarly looking product and it works exactly the same way. I suspect that it is the same product on the inside but I can’t confirm as I haven’t opened it up.
Link to the product: https://www.calibereurope.com/en/product/rdab30-en_gb/
Hope this helps
I bought one, and it’s crap. Low sensitivity, but the most serious problem is compatibility.
Obviously, the virtual USB drive doesn’t comply to the standard.
It works on most PCs, but not on Android devices, and I found only one soundbar that detects the drive. All other devices, including a car FM transmitter, don’t detect it as a drive with playable mp3 files.
Waste of money.
do you know if there’s a site for firmware update? If you plugin with the button pressed a new usb disk called DABUPDATE appears with a firmware inside. This cheap pen has a big problem…the mp3 station always starts from the time you connected it…even if you change mp3, basically it’s impossible to do zapping
I thought that DAB+ uses HE-AAC, is it being re-encoded to mp3 inside the MVSilicon 32-bit Micro ?
I don’t know what the Receiver Chip put’s out to the Micro, but it has to do some encoding i think to get it into the MP3 Format.
portable DAB(+) radios are not much more expensive
https://tinyurl.com/wj3zr4f 19€ or https://tinyurl.com/t8kpqll 34€
Good luck adding that to your Car Radio 🙂
But i’m surprised how cheap they got in the last months, if you don’t want to add DAB to an existing Device, that is an Option of course.
That is welle.io not well.io 🙂
Interesting, it can turn any Mp3 player into a DAB+ receiver with little cost.
It can also be found on Aliexpress around $15-$16
It is not clear if different MUX will be shown as separate folders.
Jup, 15€ and you can make almost any device Play DAB+, i find that Awesome 🙂
It doesen’t seem to create Folders for the different Multiplexing Slots. It just creates MP3 Files for all found Radio Channels on all Frequencies.
regards,
Manuel