I’m looking to downsize my PC/multimedia footprint as much as possible. I came across this while searching for an FM radio that would send Bluetooth to a speaker, as detailed
in this thread.
Has anyone used SDR? How well does it work? Given the signal strength in your area, how does it compare with a hardware radio? How easy is the software to set up and use?
Any info is welcome. Thanks.
I’m a radio and electronics hobbyist and have a drawer full of SDRs of varying types, from the cheap RTL-SDRs, to band specific models for dedicated use, to ham radio quality SDRs. I can’t imagine using any of them just for FM radio. You’ll spend forever getting drivers, settings, filters, modes and etc configured how you want them. My opinion: if you just want to listen to FM, get an FM radio.
I bought a small one for a USA buck at Dollar Tree. It’s great except up here in the mountains. No speaker; a mini-jack for connecting phones or whatever and the wire serves as antenna; fits in a jeans’ watch pocket.
I think you are significantly misunderstanding what SDR fundamentally is: it’s not a more flexible way to deal with FM radio signals, it’s a programmable tool for broadcasting, receiving, and processing electromagnetic waves (i.e. a radio) across a very wide range of signal types.
Perhaps an analogy will help. Let’s say you need…a screwdriver to adjust a screw on your front door. The best tool for this purpose is…a screwdriver. Now, you could also use the screwdriver tool in a Swiss Army knife - and there are a bunch of other tools in there, too - but, frankly, a ninety-nine cent screwdriver from Home Depot will solve the problem better, faster, and cheaper than the multitool (which, after all, is really meant for very different things than around-the-house repairs).
As Pork Rind pointed out, SDR is very cool and very good at what it does (though there is often a lot of…colorful language that goes along with making them work) - but a drop-in replacement for FM receivers they are not.
If you want to get an idea of what you can do with SDR, check out http://websdr.org which is a portal to a collection of internet accessible SDR radios around the world.
Have you only a small desktop or large attache case? How small a footprint can you stand? (Pun intended!) And beware shrinking too far - bigger stuff can be sturdier and more convenient. My magnificent hands prefer larger buttons than smaller. YMMV.
Is my footprint too large? A 12.5-inch ThinkPad fills my lap. Nearby is the remote for the book-size BT-enabled Sharp receiver across the room; its wired speakers lurk under rarely-filled rockers. I can stream from the laptop or drive the Sharp to play AM, FM, or CD. If PG&E cuts power again before a generator is installed in our remote mountain cabin next month, Internet will likely stay up till the UPS battery dies, and for vital info I can hand-crank the book-sized Realistic AM-FM-NOAA radio stashed nearby.
Smaller? I’ll stream the ThinkPad to a pocket-able BT speaker and keep the hand-crank unit ready. Smaller yet? We’ll take our ThinkPads and Android tablets out to the 25-foot RV and drive where reception is good.
PS: Nothing capable on this list of SDRs looks inexpensive to me. Your budget may vary.
I guess it depends, “capable” of what. The $15-20 dongle is capable of receiving local FM stations; it’s not like it won’t.
I have an SDRPlay RSP1A. Trust me, these things are not the droids you’re looking for. Yes, they can receive broadcast AM/FM just fine, but they can receive a lot of other radio signals as well, within their tuning capabilities. As such, they’re primarily intended for radio geeks and the software used to control them represents that. User friendly it is not.
edited to add: here’s a screenshot of the software the RSP1A comes with.
Fully agree. I’m an amateur radio operator and electronics hobbyist and these would be right up my alley. I bought some and played around but they’re not any better than radios I already have and a lot of trouble to get working.
That’s all true; for what it’s worth, here is a simple script that will talk to one of those RTL-SDR dongles, tune into an FM station, and output sound:
rtl_fm -M wbfm -f 89.1M | play -r 32k -t raw -e s -b 16 -c 1 -V1 -
so you don’t have to be too much of an engineer to run it or program a script around it, but you still need to be able to hook it up to a Raspberry Pi or other small computer and get everything working, suitable for hackers but not necessarily designed to be simple or foolproof.