Just a quick note for those waiting to confirm that the RTL-SDR Blog V4 is now in stock at Amazon USA. We have linked both the dongle + antenna set, and dongle only listings below. For customers outside of the USA please check our international purchasing links at www.rtl-sdr.com/store.
With the demand being high, if you were waiting please order soon as the next shipment most likely won't be in until January. To learn more about the RTL-SDR Blog V4, please see our product release post.
Over on Crowd Supply our KrakenSDR is currently reduced by 15% for Black Friday. The sale lasts until November 30, or while stocks last. This brings the price of the KrakenSDR down to US$424, down from the regular US$499 pricing. The companion antenna set is also reduced from US$199 down to US$169.
If you weren't already aware, KrakenSDR is our 5-channel coherent radio based on RTL-SDRs, and it can be used for applications like radio direction finding.
With this plugin you can create a key/value text mapping to turn any USB control device into something that can control various settings in SDR#. The controller hardware could perhaps be anything from a USB knob controller to a gamepad.
Alan also provides an example of a hardware USB knob controller that he's created which works together with the plugin. On the linked page he shows the components required to build the controller, how to wire up the circuit and provides the Arduino code.
Over on his YouTube channel "saveitforparts" has uploaded a video where he uses an umbrella, pin tin and tin foil tape to create a simple dish antenna for receiving GOES, NOAA and METEOR HRPT satellites.
The full build consists of an umbrella covered in tin foil tape, a helical wire feed on a pie tin, a filtered LNA, an RTL-SDR and an Android phone running SDR++. While he did have initial success at receiving, he soon decided to swap out the helical wire feed for a PCB linear feed instead which worked much better as helical feeds can be very difficult to get right.
Through the video saveitforparts goes over the failures he had, in the end noting that it's not a great antenna, but it's something that can be used in a pinch.
We also want to remind readers that we are currently Crowd Funding for our Discovery Dish, which will be a low cost way to get into L-band satellite reception.
Over on his TechMinds YouTube channel, Matt has uploaded a video where he reviews a US$20 active antenna distributor that he purchased on Banggood / Aliexpress. An active distributor allows you to use one antenna with multiple radios, without incurring any distribution losses, which for passive splitters are typically at least 3dB per split. It does this by using an amplifier before the splitter. This is especially useful if you have a wideband antenna like a Discone.
The product comes with a built in battery, or it can also be powered via USB-C. Unfortunately it has a rather restrictive frequency range, only covering 100 kHz to 300 MHz.
Later in the video Matt shows the internal PCB of the product, showing its battery and circuitry.
ONE ANTENNA - FOUR RECEIVERS RF ACTIVE DISTRIBUTION
Aaron who created and maintains the DragonOS SDR Linux distribution has recently uploaded a new video where he uses a KrakenSDR to simultaneously receive and decode multiple aircraft tracking, telemetry/messaging signals including ADS-B, UAT, ACARS and VDL2.
The video shows how to setup all the software including FlightView GUI which is a graphical user interface that allows users to manage and configure various Docker based aircraft-related services including tar1090, readsb and acarshub.
Over on his YouTube channel Aaron who created and maintains the DragonOS SDR Linux distribution, has uploaded a video demonstrating how to use the GNSS-SDR software together with an RTL-SDR and patch antenna to obtain a live GPS position.
Previously we had only seen a Windows method involving GNSS-SDRLIB and RTKNAVI working as GNSS-SDR on Linux seemed impossible to get running. However, Aaron managed to find a working RTL-SDR configuration for GNSS-SDR which made it come alive. This is great as now GNSS-SDR should be able to run on a portable single board computer like a Raspberry Pi.
The video is a tutorial that shows how to install all the required dependencies, how to compile GNSS-SDR, how to configure it for an RTL-SDR, and how to use it with our RTL-SDR Blog L-band patch antenna.
DragonOS FocalX Setup GNSS-SDR and Obtain GPS Position w/ RTLSDR (Patch Antenna, WarDragon)
Thank you to Matt from SDRx.io for submitting a story on our forums about his project called SDRx.IO which is a service that hopes to be a platform that allows remote users to find and connect to public RTL_TCP and/or SpyServer servers. Matt writes:
A few days ago I started a project called SDRx.io. I could not find any platform with public RTL-TCP servers, so I thought I would try to make one for fun.
SpyServer mode (through internet proxy) is also supported. The official map/directory currently does not seem to support this. SpyServer is the default mode, because SDR stations can "somewhat" be shared between multiple clients.
Users can switch radio station modes using the web interface.
SDRx.io routes traffic in a way that protects the actual endpoint from internet exposure, and the server network acts as a CDN (the project currently has 5 servers). Servers can be seen as proxies for radio stations that host the SDR hardware.
The early preview currently on the site only has my own first 2 stations in Switzerland for VHF/UHF, and I am now looking for other users who would be interested in hosting/sharing new radio stations to connect to this project, or participate otherwise.
Required network throughput for RTL-TCP is about 35 mbps at 2.048 MS/s
I know there are already several other projects with public SDR servers, but few carry the full IQ signal, and none are currently providing direct TCP connections compatible with the rtl_tcp protocol.
Your feedback is of course welcome here :D
The service is currently not yet active due a lack of initial interest, but if you are interested you can get in contact with Matt at [email protected].
