The Silphase R1 SDR Receiver
Thanks to Thomas' SWLing Blog for bringing to attention the Silphase R1 SDR receiver. This is an upcoming high performance HF SDR receiver being manufactured in the EU by a Polish company called Silphase. The R1 appears to be targeting premium SWLer customers with a price of US$1199. However, they note that by the end of 2020 they will have a 25W transceiver option, and later a 100W transceiver option. The SDR is currently available for preorder only and the sign up form can be found at the bottom of their website.
The Silphase R1 comes with a 5" touch screen that shows a spectrum display, has dual VFO's, four speakers and a metal alloy enclosure. It also comes with a built in telescopic antenna, but external antennas can be connected with the F connector. The tuning range is just the HF bands from 0.1 - 30 MHz and the ADC resolution is 16 bits.
Looking forward to release, looks very promising!
Way to expensive , found this one on ali .
https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/4001080658440.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000023.9.6ccb4491vlqtWJ
much more affordable.
A proper tabletop radio with controls and a display can’t really be compared with that imo.
The biggest problem with that hardware (RX-666) is “Support software HDSDR customized version, SDRSHARPER customized version” and “Operating environment requirements: windows7 win8 win8.1 win10” the S in SDR, is lacking.
In the case of the RX-666 without either a fully open source firmware (BladeRF, HackRF, Airspy R2, LimeSDR, PlutoSDR,…) or an open source host driver (rtl-sdr, BladeRF, HackRF, Airspy R2, LimeSDR, PlutoSDR, Airspy HF+,…) you are limited. Or even the bottom of the barrel blobs everywhere and an open API (SDRplay) to access those blobs, where you are limited to using your hardware on the operating systems and CPU architectures selected to be supported by the vendor (There is no way to add support to say FreeBSD operating system without the vendor supplying additional blobs. And no way to add support for for say a MIPS or RISC-V host computer without the vendor shipping additional blobs.). When you look at pictures of the PCB (printed circuit board) and see the part numbers on the tops of the major IC chips have been sanded off, it is a bad sign.
So it may be affordable, but is it actually good, or are you just pouring your money down the drain. And I’m not even going to waste my time thinking about the “Silphase R1” above. Until hardware (and software) has shipped, there is not much to say about it.
Looks like the RX-666 is a typical “new” product from China, they took existing open hardware and software ( https://github.com/ik1xpv/BBRF103 ) for the BBRF103 (which uses a R820T2 tuner and a Cypress FX3 USB 3.0 controller – https://github.com/ik1xpv/BBRF103/blob/master/HARDWARE/BLOCKscheme01.pdf ), tweaked the design a bit (upgraded the ADC, changed from a 2 layer PCB to a 4 layers). But all support of the “new” hardware will be filter back to the one person who got no money, the person who created the original design.
i avoid chinese products, especially electronics, they are built with poor quality components and assembled by overworked slaves of the chinese state
Look carefully because this is the only thing we ever gonna see from this company because of the insane prize they dare to ask for this cheap plastic looking radio. I’d buy myself a IC-7300 for that amount of money. Keep the 3dB sensitivity.
Magnesium alloy body … where have u seen plastic ?
Euh, Magnesium? Blame the photographer…. I really thought it was grey plastic. Anyway, magnesium or not. It’s still the most ugly radio I’ve ever seen. And there is a lot of wasted space on the front. There should be buttons or potmeters. Else the front should be way smaller.
My money goes to Icom 7300. (30kHz – 74.800MHz for the same prize and you get a 100 Watt TX as a gift)
The photo is just a computer rendering, the actual product doesn’t seem to exist yet as it’s still being made.
So… That is why it looks like a clay-render.
Thanks, I didn’t notice. If I don’t like the looks of it, I don’t look at the text too much either.
I’m Blender user myself. This should be done waaaay better to avoid topics like these.
One can make things look better with Blender3D than in real life. This is not an example.
…well price aside what your missing here is the fact that you have a person/company/group who may have the skills but very limited funds for a full production million+ run of units, piecing together a (from the specs at least) very useful SDR, who if enough interest is shown (through purchases) very well may continue to be able to INNOVATE. It’s funny though that you compare it to an IC-7300…which comes from a multi BILLION DOLLAR company who not only has the ability to price their equipment accordingly instead of “banging the market at a total complete OVERPRICE” for the simple reason of BECAUSE …..and now their latest “jokes on you” product the IC-705 which really because we are in the 21st century be priced at about 699.00 US buckaroos….not 1500…..