How to get started with RTL-SDR | Hacker News Reader

How to get started with RTL-SDR

32 pointsroborodent10 comments

If you're on OS X I've been working on a fork of some homebrew packages [1] which could (and hopefully will soon) be a whole lot better.

There are some good getting started tutorials for using gnuradio [2] which I found very helpful when getting started. For different hardware, they still can be quite useful.

1. https://github.com/cole-christensen/homebrew-rfbrew

2. https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/

Gosh I swear I tried to follow the brew steps to install GNURadio a million times and after hours it always end up stuck in some really weird compilation error which I failed to Google out.

I gave up.

Me too, I became frustrated enough to try to fix it. My hacks on the upstream succeeded on a fresh install of OS X right before I left on vacation alas with some inaccurately documented steps.

Interested in being a tester? E-mail me (I would be very happy if I could help more than just myself and get some external verification)

If you're on windows, I recommend using SDR# instead [1]. It's got a lot cleaner interface, and easily supports running multiple copies simultaneously if you have multiple SDRs you want to use.

http://sdrsharp.com/

"My state doesn't allow Amazon Affiliates"

What is the reason for this? Never stumbled upon a line like that.

IIRC California[1] ruled that if you were an Amazon Affiliate living in California, then that constituted Amazon having a "Nexus" in the state which would make them liable for sales taxes on all their Californian sales. Rather than have to add sales tax to all their Californian sales, Amazon chose to eliminate all their Californian resident Amazon Affiliates. No doubt the same applies to a number of other states, but I haven’t kept up with the details.

So it’s not really "my state doesn’t allow Amazon Affiliates", more "Amazon took a business decision to not have Amazon Affiliates in my state".

[1] Maybe it was another state, but the principle remains the same.

What software is suggested for those running Linux?

Give http://gqrx.dk/ a try.

http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr#KnownApps

it's all on http://rtlsdr.org/

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