RTL-SDR GNU Radio update
While we await the arrival of the Ezcap dongle from DealExtreme we found this video from Balint Seeber. He’s made using this device with GNU Radio even easier by coding up a source block for use with GNU Radio Companion.
GNU Radio Companion (GRC) is a graphical tool for creating signal flow graphs and generating flow-graph source code. Instead of using GNU Radio from the command line, GRC allows you to drag and drop various signal inputs/outputs and DSP building blocks onto a flowgraph to design your own radio receivers, transmitters and supporting components. (Note that transmitting is not possible with the Ezcap dongle.)
Thanks to Balint Seeber for this outstanding code contribution to the growing RTL-SDR user community!
For all the details and downloads on the Gr-Baz code project visit the Gr-Baz Spenchwiki.
This entry was posted in code, open source, RF, SDR and tagged GNURadio companion, RTL-SDR.
Comments
What would be very interesting is some measurements on the different dongles. The two I’ve tried appears pretty deaf compared to a hand held transceiver. (not too surprising though)
They do receive the stronger broadcast stations nearby, but other interesting stuff they do not pick up. :-(
I will hook them up to my Schlumberger Stabilock and check the sensitivity on them.
I think you will find that they are as sensitive as anything else.
The problem is that they are very wide band receivers without sufficient RF filtering and strong FM and TV stations in the area will make them appear deaf. It’s the same with the Funcube Dongle. In a city it is practically useless; however, when I go away from the city I can suddenly pick up signals from cubesats (TX less than 100mW) using a handheld arrow antenna.
Alexandru is absolutely correct. After using a good bandpass filter with my FUNcube, it performs brilliantly in the city (otherwise completely overloaded by FM broadcast).
Make sure also that you’ve turned you gain right up when testing the RTL. I’ve found even the ‘less strong’ ones will often make it in. The gain range is printed when starting the GNU Radio Source block (although I might have an option to make the gain setting relative).
Dealextreme is out of stock, which typically means that they won’t send anything to you. Just canceled mine and bought the ebay one for 11$.
Did the same thing. DX also sends “similar” products, same case but might be different model (eg. DVB-t with FC00xx tuner instead of the better E4000)
Same too! Searched for “DVB-T P160″ on eBay.
Here is a compatibility list: http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/rbqfz/rtlsdr_compatibility_list_work_in_progress_please/
Both the “Hama Nano” and the “DVB-T P160″ (the $11 one above) are supposed to contain the RTL2832U/E4000 chipset/tuner pair:
http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/r8p6p/looks_like_this_tiny_hama_nano_may_work_with/
My $11 P160 order got cancelled as “out of stock” so the seller could relist at a higher price :(.
From the angry reddit threads, it looks like most of the P160s on ebay were sold by alternate identities of the same runteck.com/unikoo(Alibaba) company, who is now cancelling them in order to relist the stock as an RTL2832U SDR at prices ranging from $30-$99.
According to the reddit thread, it’s happening even to people who were told it had “shipped”.
Thanks for the update. I went the eBay route as well, P-160, as DealExtreme order was sitting dormant too long. Just to remind folks there are simple HF converters to cover frequencies from DC on up http://www.ct1ffu.com/site/hf-converter.pdf just for an example.
That CT1FFU HF converter is a highly questionable design. Never use an NE602 on HF and call it a real radio without some form of AGC. The NE602 has terrible dynamic range characteristics.
I’d really like to have a look at the EL4000 datasheet but it’s only available under a NDA. Have you seen it for free download?
Jan
If you find it, please post!
However, the EL4000 seems to have a very low pin count, and you can guess most of them by looking at PCB close-ups (original or clone) or block diagrams:
http://www.radioscanner.ru/forum/topic42975-2.html
http://microsat.com.pl/popup_image.php?pID=35
http://www.funcubedongle.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/P1010401.jpg
The last link (from http://www.funcubedongle.com/?p=37) features an original outline schematic of the first FUNcube Dongle!!!
Using a BP on the SPI and I2C busses should do the trick…
It also show that in the FunCube, the EL4000 output is a quad (2 pairs) of differential analog signals routed to the TLV320AIC3104 audio codec. So you can expect a better than 8 bit resolution if you pick up these signals and adapt them to your PC soundcard!
Finally after 38 days, my ezcap EzTV Realtek 2832U-based USB dongle arrived from China (ebay:shunyoutong1999). It does somewhat work with the HDSDR program and ExtIO plugin, but only after using “Zadig” to install a driver (EACH TIME the program is restarted !?). I have not really figured out the HDSDR program so maybe user error, but trying to use the tuner often pops up “While setting frequency: _I2CWriteArray: the control request was not supported by the device [-9] @ E4000″ in the ExtIO window, and it is then locked until a restart. Hmmmm.
@ jbeale.
I’m getting the same behavior with my ezcap. I tried all sorts of settings within ExtIO, but nothing seems to get me out of the “While setting frequency: _I2CWriteArray” error. Hoping this is something that Balint (or someone smarter than me) can figure out. Fun and cheap toy, but very frustrating to have to re-plug the sucker in every time I change the frequency a few MHz.
Actually I got it working without the error now. Follow these instructions to the letter, and it might work for you too: http://www.hmmb.nl/downloads/RTL2832U-installing.pdf
It is *probably* just using the device hint “RTL readlen=262144 tuner=e4k” along with the new librtl2832++.dll but I’d advise doing the whole procedure. For the price it’s a pretty cool toy. Right now looking at the 19th harmonic of a 26 MHz oscillator, which is at 494 MHz.
Thanks for the link jbeale. This worked perfectly, no more I2Cwrite errors with the readlen buffer at 262144. No if I could just get a decent antenna and connector for the dongle.
FWIW, the ebay vendor I bought from is now selling a much cheaper version which I suspect is not usable as a SDR. However you can now find $20 tuner dongles on ebay specifying the RTL2832U & E4000 tuner chip, and claiming compatibility with GNU Radio.
For anyone interested in this subject, I recommend the google group
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ultra-cheap-sdr
a place to discuss all things related to cheap Software Defined Radio, with focus on using RTL2832U-based DVB-T USB dongles on Linux with GNU Radio, and on Windows with HDSDR.
Mine takes a 50 ohm MCX male connector (outer diameter 3.7 mm). I could hack open the provided short monopole+cable, but I noticed you can get MCX – BNC pigtails for about $4 on ebay.
I just received my ezcap USU unit from dealextreme. It took about a month but they finally delivered. So far it works fine from the command line..
just FYI the google groups forum mentioned above is quite active on this low cost SDR topic, various new software being developed- worth a look.
Would love to see a tutorial showing a complete step-by-step setup under Linux (and/or Windows).
Installation seems to be the easy part (under FC16), but making gnuradio to work (e.g. setup source block) seems to be the first challenge!
And it would be cool if the tutorial shows some useful examples like how to decode POCSAG would be cool.
Note that the rtl2832 uses the e4000 tuner chip that is a generation after the one used in the FCD. It does have a tuneable front end filter on the chip, see the data sheet. I have had much less trouble with overload on the rtl2832. I now have it decoding a-dsb and qps under ubuntu
for other decoding software for this device see the bottom of http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr