Portable Homemade Spectrum Analyzer using a Beaglebone Black and the RTL-SDR

On YouTube, Stephen Ong has posted a video (and written a short post on his blog) of a portable home made spectrum analyzer he made using the RTL-SDR, a Beaglebone Black and an LCD touchscreen. The Beaglebone Black is a small Linux capable PC that fits in a hand, similar to the Raspberry Pi but with slightly more processing power.

Earlier in the year we posted about another Beaglebone based spectrum analyzer, but this new one by Stephen seems to be much improved with touchscreen capabilities and an improved user interface.

Spectrum Analyzer using Beaglebone Black and RTL-SDR

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Dr. Dan

This really isn’t a spectrum analyzer, Without the ability to actually analyze the RF signal It becomes nothing more than a simple band scope.

In order for it to be classified as a spectrum analyzer, at the very minimum, it would need at least 2 markers with peak averaging or hold which could then automatically calculate and display dbc . preferable it should also have a means of normalizing the display. This would give you the ability to use something like a wideband noise generator to simulate a tracking generator. This would give you the ability to sweep filters and measure their frequency response.

I’m not sure how hard it would be to add those tools but doing so would transform this from a toy to a useful tool

mark C

could u email price for all this and name of things needed ?

thank you mark C.