On 06/03/15 15:29, rickman wrote:
On 3/6/2015 10:21 AM, Brian Reay wrote:
On 06/03/2015 15:07, rickman wrote:
On 3/6/2015 2:46 AM, AndyW wrote:
On 05/03/2015 23:04, gareth wrote:
"Iain Young, G7III" wrote in message
...

An awful lot of evidence by citing off-the-shelf solutions for both
the hardware and the software of SDR.

It depends where you draw the line.
I have a DVB dongle that I use under linux.
I use pre-written drivers and a waterfall code module but the rest of
the code is self-written by me in c++ and python with some java 2D
stuff
for the pretty front end and logging and analysis (largely because I
prefer the collections interface in Java over c++ for massive data
handling).

It is certainly homebrew because the amount of time and effort I spent
in writing to code (and time to learn python on codeacademy - good site
BTW) was probably longer than I have spent designing and building
hardware.

Your mileage may vary....

Andy


I didn't know about these things. Pretty amazing. A UHF/VHF tuner for
under $10 on eBay. Which one do you have?


There are a number of similar ones. This is the one I have:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/RTL2832U-R...em566780 9155



You need to make or buy an antenna connector so you can use a BNC or
something sensible to connect to your antenna system. The supplied
antenna is pretty grim, I suppose you could use the connector an snip
the rather poor coax short and put a decent connector on it.

Depending on which OS you use, there are a number of existing programs
you can use with it to get a feel for it before you start developing
your own. Some people use them with R Pi's to make receive only iGates
or Internet Scanners etc. I think I even saw a webpage where someone had
used one as a spectrum analyser.

My understanding was that the idea of using them as SDRs came from the
USA but perhaps not.

What do you use yours for?


I've not used it much. I was curious and decided to try one. I don't
like radios you 'drive' from a keyboard or computer, I prefer the
traditional front panel.


The one exception is a PCR1000 which I use as a bit of test kit- with an
attenuator and suitable SW it makes a passable spectrum analyser. I may
try the RTL dongle out for this in time.

I do like the maths of SDRs etc. but actually using them holds little
attraction.


The same goes for modes like PSK etc.

I've no issue with others enjoying them, they just don't appeal to me.