rtl-sdr.com

Hi,

** EDIT - Update **

I am now seeing that there seems to be a big disproportion between these two USB sticks.

The RTL-SDR.Com v3 does not pick up the same Radio station channels that I would expect between 99.5 MHz - 105 MHz, the Nooelec picks them up just fine with the same antenna. Strong signals in the spectrum with Nooelec.

I played with the RF gain of the RTL-SDR.Com v3 and the spectrum channels somewhat came out of the noise floor but no where near as strong as the Nooelec. I even increased the RF gain and it was not great - nothing but static on these channels with the RTL-SDR v3, but I note the USB got VERY hot.

I tried this on both Cubic SDR and GNU Radio on linux.

Are there known issues with the RTL-SDR and Linux? I've followed all the instructions for installing...

There perhaps might be some differences in build quality and manufacturing variation.

I noted the exact opposite temperature problem with my two specimens, a narrow Noolec and an RTL-SDRv3. The Noolec dongle got very hot and eventually burned itself out. Whereas the RTL-SDRv3 has currently been running at a more moderate temperature for over a year. Didn't notice any significant difference in VHF sensitivity. Both of the above running rtl_tcp on Raspberry Pi 3's.

Might just be a bad chip. All RTL-SDR dongles use a very similar circuit (apart from a few additional features and variations here and there). So they'll all receive roughly the same.

So the only defining factor on most faults is the silicon chips themselves. Sometimes those silicon chips do decide to just randomly fail. If it happened to you, please contact us for a free replacement at [email protected].