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Comment by trishmapow2 | Hacker News Reader

Rtl-sdrs are great, probably one of the best accidental discoveries I've seen. So many things being sent out from 0-1.5GHz that you can sniff. One that I see often are the unencrypted pagers broadcasting patient details, hotel security information etc. Then you've also got amateur radio, air traffic control, GSM, key fobs, weather stations, satellites, all within the reach of anyone with $15 to spare.

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I want[ed] to get one but the options are overwhelming. I dislike buying not-the-best product. I also dislike eBay, which seems to be one of the main methods of purchasing a setup (have been burned too many times by sellers).

Buy the kit from rtl-sdr.com -- no need to use ebay and they are the best option for a beginner

Thanks! Bought one for myself and a second for my Ham radio enthusiast father.

Consider also an FM band-stop filter and an LNA, apparently makes things so much better. Even with the antenna removed I can still hear FM broadcast, ruins the whole band. I've just ordered those two, want to test it with NOAA reception.

Allow me to point you to SDRplay who have a line of USB receivers that are far more capable (more sensitive, less overwhelmed by strong signals, wider capture bandwidth, wider frequency range) than any of the RTL dongles, which only cover shortwave (<30MHz) with basically a hack. I like SDR Console as the software for this.

https://www.sdrplay.com/

I use https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr for tracking my electric and gas usage on a minute-by-minute basis.

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