Skip to main content

Applications using RTL-SDR: a revisit after two years

Two years have been passed from my last serious exploration using a cheap RTL TV receiver. I still remember my self trying to found a connector from the Canadian antenna to European type connector. I couldn't find my  Lifeview LV5T Deluxe usb that i bought last time, so i bought a new one, this time a HAMA DVB-T based on the FC0013. The reception is similar with my old lifeview stick, however a noticed worse performance when going over 800 MHz. The time has come again to see if something changed in the field of applications that support the RTL receivers.

Last weeks i have used four different applications, so here is my opinion and some screenshots:

1. SDR# (SDRSharp)

One of my favorites when i 'm using windows. The newest version has been improved considerably from the last time i used it. The application was open source, but unfortunately the programmer switched to closed source, but it is still free to download.



2. HDSDR 

This was the first SDR application i have ever used. I remember two years ago the performance of the application was really bad. In the next release things got better, but still it was far away from SDR#. My experience even trying simple FM radio channels is still bad. Limited options about the bandwidth.



3. SDR-RADIO.COM V2

I tried this application from curiosity. It suppose to be the most complex from all others.  The problem is not in the complexity of the application, but in the bad GUI design, compared with the other applications. It is not bad choice, but the interface need improvement.




4. GQRX

This is totally open source. It is fast, but looks simpler compared with the other applications. I would expect smoother controls from what is now. It is a pain in the back if you want to compile it in old version of the Ubuntu, due to dependencies in the GNU radio.


Overall i will choose SDR#. It has the best interface and it is one of the fastest available. SDR-RADIO V2 is not bad, but needs some work on the GUI. Avoid using HDSDR, it is still limited when using RTL based chips, although the author has improved the performance. GQRX is simple and fast in Linux and it is available in the repositories if you are using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

Popular posts from this blog

Processing Milky Way in RawTherapee

This text is an analysis of a video I did some months ago how to process photos of our Milky Way in RawTherapee. You can find the picture here . The photo was taken by wiegemalt. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Editing: Step 1: Fixing lighting The first thing someone notices when opening the picture is the extreme noise due to high ISO used (1600 - check the picture on the right). The first thought is to de-noise the picture, however, if you do that you are going to loose the details of the night sky. The main reason for the high noise is the additional exposure Rawtherapee adds when the 'Auto' button is pressed. In particular, the RT adds +2.4 EV to equalize the picture. This is Wrong! What we want is to keep the noise down and at the same time bring the stars up. That's why we are going to play with the Tone Curve of the RT. To adjust the light properly we increase the cont...
Read more

RTL-SDR Blog V3 Arrived

I recently bought a new RTL dongle that supports Direct Sampling that allows frequencies less than 40Mhz. In particular, the model I ordered was the RTL-SDR BLOG V.3. DONGLE that was really cheap compared with other solution. It still can't reach the quality of the other more expensive receivers, but it still a step up. The Dongle comes with a long external antenna. The RTL dongle. So, the question now is how better is from my old SDR. I did a check with the RTL power tool to see what is the difference. My old SDR Dongle (Fitipower FC0013) has coverage from 22 to 1100 MHz. The new Dongle RTL Blog V3 a has Rafael Micro R820T has coverage from 24 - 1766 MHz, but it also contains Direct Sampling that allows for High Frequencies. A word of warning here, the reception using Direct Sampling is very bad, especially if you connect the antenna without a filter band or/and preamplifier. I did experiments using the rtl_power, and the results showed much more gain for the ne...
Read more

Processing a High Dynamic Range raw image with RawTherapee

Editing High contrast images is hard because you have at the same time to decrease the highlights, increase the dark areas, and at the same time keep the natual colours. Although not always possible, shooting RAW always helps. The RawTherapee offers a plethora of tools to "fix" your images. To illustrate the tools available in RawTherapee, we will edit a picture taken by Ivan Sagalaev and released under CC license in the Play Raw competition of the pixls.us forum here . Image after importing to RawTherapee. Step 1: Preparation. First we fix the distortion (if exists) in the Transform tab. Before start editing we always try to fix possible distortions of the image. Initial Histogram of the picture. Step 2: Editing the light.  The second step is to press the "Auto Levels" button in the Exposure tab. This will light the dark places of the picture, but it is not enough.The sky now is it much lighter than before and the colors washed out. Exposu...
Read more