{"id":2011,"date":"2017-01-24T16:48:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T16:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/?p=2011"},"modified":"2017-01-24T16:48:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T16:48:26","slug":"quick-rtl-sdr-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/?p=2011","title":{"rendered":"Quick RTL SDR Comparison"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of a recent project, I’ve used a few different RTL SDR devices, and was surprised how drifty some of them\u00a0are, one in particular. \u00a0For their intended application – decoding wideband transmissions – this isn’t an issue, but if you want to use one to decode RTTY then it certainly is – the signal will soon drift outside of the audio passband unless the SDR is retuned.<\/p>\n

My project is on a Raspberry Pi, where I found that all but one (see the test results below) was basically unusable. \u00a0So I did some quick tests on my desk, with a Windows PC running Airspy, for a crude visual comparison of drift rates. \u00a0I tested 4 devices:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. NooElec Nano 2<\/li>\n
  2. A very old E4000-based SDR<\/li>\n
  3. Current model R820T2 SDR<\/li>\n
  4. NooElec Aluminium-cased SDR<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    1 – NooElec Nano2<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Poorest of the bunch.<\/p>\n

    2 – E4000<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Better.<\/p>\n

    3 – R820T2<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Not better.<\/p>\n

    4 – Ali cased<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Much, much better.<\/p>\n

    As such, the metal-cased NooElec is the only one I could recommend.<\/p>\n

    Of course, there are much better SDRs out there – the Funcubes, SDR Play and Airspy models, and for chasing or tracking balloons you should really spend the extra money – but for bench testing then this particular RTL SDR is just fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As part of a recent project, I’ve used a few different RTL SDR devices, and was surprised how drifty some of them\u00a0are, one in particular. \u00a0For their intended application – decoding wideband transmissions – this isn’t an issue, but if you want to use one to decode RTTY then it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2017,"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daveakerman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}