{"id":88,"date":"2014-05-08T14:45:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T14:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.catalystlogic.com.au\/?p=88"},"modified":"2026-03-01T01:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T14:44:18","slug":"adventures-in-software-defined-radio-sdr-via-a-dvb-t-usb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/?p=88","title":{"rendered":"Adventures in Software Defined Radio (SDR) via a DVB-T USB"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a friend\u00a0told me about their own SDR setups, I though I would take the sub $10 investment to have a tinker myself.<\/p>\n

While I have never been into the HAM radio scene, at this low cost, having the ability to scan a wide range of frequencies via my desktop was enough to get my attention.<\/p>\n

The two most common entry level USB's, commonly sold as cheap USB DVB-T dongles\u00a0<\/span>both sport a\u00a0RTL2832U chipset, there are older references on the web to the E4000 Elonics Tuner, rare enough for an asking price 4 times what it was 24 months ago for the places that have stock, and the more common and newer R820T Tuner.<\/p>\n

While it would be some time until I would be at a level that I would notice a difference from one tuner to the other, outside of the slighly limited frequency range of the E4000 (52MHZ -to 1100MHz & 1250MHz - 2200MHz) compared to the R820T (24MHZ -\u00a01770MHz), I wanted to try for a\u00a0E4000 as my friend\u00a0had the R820T.<\/p>\n

Selling R820T's as E4000's<\/h4>\n

Alibaba has a ton of these,<\/a>\u00a0or at least claim too of which I got two of the variety below. Not sure of the exact sellers as I gave a few links to my Wife for birthday ideas as few months ago, though I know she got them from 2 different vendors<\/p>\n

Some are boxed in the Digital Energy Branded Mini Digital TV Stick, sporting the text DVB-T+DAB+FM.<\/p>\n

\"20140508_214929\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The hardware ID PID 2838 matched to the E4000 according to this SDR Wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"SDRHWID\"<\/a><\/p>\n

However, closer investigation shows this was in fact a R820T<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is the PCB, case & antenna of my Sticks<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>
My USB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And here is one I found on Superkuh's Blog,<\/a> which he stated he purchased early 2012.<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/superkuh.com\/rtlsdr.html\"<\/a>
http:\/\/superkuh.com\/rtlsdr.html<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notice the PCB Layout Differences.<\/p>\n

Close up of the two Tuner Chips.<\/p>\n

\"E400<\/a>
E400 on Left, R280T on Right<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It seems this enclosure used to hold a E4000 years ago, and Alibaba vendors are selling them as E4000's, which are more desirable for those wanting to utilise the\u00a0higher frequencies.<\/p>\n

Not a big deal I kind of though it was too good to be true to get a E4000 via Alibaba at a R820T price, and since the current going price on a E4000 ($65 at the time of this post), I wasn't out anything I would have been sourcing a pair of R820T's.<\/p>\n

There is a MCX plug on the side, which\u00a0resulted in a purchase of a MCX to Coaxial adapter\u00a0<\/a>that will be arriving soon though some USB models have a RF Coaxial instead.<\/p>\n

\"20140508_213958\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After the un-boxing, it was time to try out some software.<\/p>\n

Windows SDR Software<\/h3>\n

There are plenty of blogs<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0pages<\/a>\u00a0that go into the details\u00a0<\/a>of installing the USB drivers, and setting up SDR# (SDR Sharp<\/a>), and the add-ons needed for the RTL2832U, and a ton of other plugins<\/a>. As well as setup for another common entry level SDR package, HDSDR<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While, I am lucky to get a FM signal at all thanks to the mini antenna, I do manage to get the 3 main local FM stations on SDR#<\/p>\n

\"SDRSharp\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Similar results on HDSDR.<\/p>\n

\"HDSDR\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Not all too impressive quite yet.<\/p>\n

Once the MSX to Coax arrives I'll be able to plug it into the TV Antenna and get a much better signal. and start scanning\u00a0more frequencies<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a friend\u00a0told me about their own SDR setups, I though I would take the sub $10 investment to have a tinker myself. While I have never been into the HAM radio scene, at this low cost, having the ability to scan a wide range of frequencies via my desktop was enough to get my ...continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234,"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/54.253.247.134\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}