V3 R860 RTL2832U 1PPM TCXO SMA Software Defined Radio (Dongle Only) (Black)

I've only used this for a couple hours now, but man was this easy to set up and awesome to use. It is very fun to visually see and navigate through the radio signals. It took me less than 10 minutes using their quick start guide on rtl-sdr.com/qsgI gained confidence before purchasing this device from all the positive reviews of course and mainly their website. The website is easy to navigate and I was overjoyed to see how detailed the troubleshooting guide was, so if I ran into any problems I could very likely find a solution. It is nice to see such a detailed troubleshooting page with pretty much any possible problem that could happen with this device. Anytime I jump into a DIY project i'm afraid I will have to use google for 3-4 hours to find a solution. I only ran into one problem during set up with the software and that was on the step that said to run the batch file in the extracted folder of the SDR# software. Probably because I am on a Domain computer with security settings that prevent batch files from running. Well in that same step on their quick start guide they had a link to manually install the drivers instead which only took a minute to do. I followed the rest of the steps. Plugged in the RTL-SDR with my ICOM female SMA antenna from my HAM radio and sure enough it came alive instantly. I was amazed at how easy it was to set up. I turned up the gain in the software and I could start finding random HAMs in my area and various repeaters. I couldn't find any HF signals probably due to my antenna. Their website suggests getting a planar disk antenna or a discone antenna for listening on nearly any frequency between 25Mhz and 1300Mhz. My HAM rubber duckie antenna with this picked up a lot of signals from local FM radio, 136Mhz-900Mhz.This is definitely an awesome buy for the price of $17. I just bought a Uniden BC125AT handheld radio scanner for $110 earlier this week. It is a handy device since it is portable, but it has only a small portion of the frequency range compared to SDR. For $110 it isn't worth it for what it does so I am definitely returning it after playing with this thing. I'm excited to experiment more with it to find other neat uses for SDR.I highly recommend getting a USB extension cable for this device so you can have enough cable to work with. I happened to have a 10ft USB Amazon extension cable I bought a couple months ago that works perfectly for this. Since I am using this with a rubber duckie antenna it is about a foot long sticking out of the computer. Not an ideal location for this since it wouldn't fit well behind the computer and I would likely break it if it was sticking out the front of the computer. It would even be good for a laptop since all laptop USB ports stick straight out the side. A USB extension cable allows you to place the device and antenna in a much better location. My last recommendation for full use of this is a discone antenna as the company suggests or something better than a simple rubber duckie or whip antenna. This thing is too cool to only use it with a rubber duckie. Just buy it!

these are super cool. if you are looking to buy one you probably know what it is. I do recommend it works great.

Hey, if you dont know how to use a SDR, I highly suggest to look up a guide on how to start receiving with a SDR.I think its a pretty good unit, and as the title says, it's way better than the NooElec one that is in the picture. Now all the reviews that say its a terrible device, those are 95% of the time just user error. I've been using SDR stuff on and off for about 3 years, and there is a little bit of setup required, as with everything. Now I've been farting around with the NooElec one, but I decided to get a little bit of a step up. This has HF reception, just not very good in comparison to a proper transceiver. Its a good idea to get a proper antenna if you want to do some serious HF stuff. An alternate idea is to grab a balun, and a roll of speaker wire and split it so you have 2 wires then put it up as a dipole. And, you can even hook it to your rain gutters if they are metal, and use that as a receiving antenna. Cheap, but effective.Some people receive weather satellites with these, ive had some luck with the NooElec unit but this one just blows it out of the water. Ive used it to pick up images from NOAA weather satellites, and it does an incredible job of that, and my setup utilizes a LNA that can be powered by the built in Bias-T. If it gets too hot for your liking, you can ziptie a heatsink with a thermal pad to the back of it and cool down the RTL-SDR.I made sure to take a high res pic so you can look closely at the differences between the two SDRs.

OK, I'm totally new to all of this so I bought this dongle.I went to the "quickstart setup guide" listed on the outside of this device. Like the 3rd step said to go to airspy website and download their SDRsharp software. The website (as of 5/20/2019) has been dead all day. Crud! I tried the manual driver downloads and the Zadig download thing which downloaded, but there's no actual software radio since you still have to get a program to run the interface.So, I poked around other places and got some even cooler (?) software to run this thing: "SDR Console v3" from sdr-radio dot com. Downloaded, it took a while since it was 137MB.I plugged in this dongle. Nothing happened. Tried it over and over. Then I plugged it into a regular USB port on my computer (instead of one labeled "SS" and I heard the usual bing-bong Windows 10 has detected a new device being plugged in. Cool!I started up the SDR Console v3 software. It asked what dongle I was using and I chose "RTL dongle" or something very similar (I did NOT select the TCP version, it's the USB version).BAM: nice radio static. It was working!!!!!!So then I thought: I have no antenna, just a dongle at this point. Also, I have no idea what any of this is.So it was "RTL Dongle-R820T" in a new window > select Bandwidth = 2MHz (for no reason) > click "Start" > static!Then I went to the middle, left side of screen and clicked on "BFM" (Broadcast FM).In the upper left part of screen there is a "Receive" box labeled RX1. You click either above or below each frequency number to change it higher or lower. I'm in Detroit and a strong radio station is 101.1 FM WRIF radio. So I got that input into the type left.Still static...so I bent a metal paperclip straight and held it up to the hole in the USB dongle meant for antenna: BAM I COULD HEAR THE FM RADIO STATION REALLY WELL!!!!!!! Then up on the screen popped another window that said "101.1 Van Halen" and it was giving me band name and song title information of what the station was playing!!!!!So, that's how you get up and running in under 5 minutes.After this you can get a "Ham it up PLUS" box to plug in to this that converts ELF and VLF signals if you want to listen to military submarine base signal (cosmic rays and solar flares interfere with these so you can detect space and atmospheric events this way).Plan on buying various SMA adapters and antennas and adapters to plug those antennas into sma connectors.Right now I'm happy with my scotch tape/paperclip antenna. I'm still waiting for the other stuff to arrive (Ham It up PLUS converter, antennas, wire to wind my own 2' square vlf antenna, fm filter (glad I didn't have that working while I was testing, lol!), a powered lo-noise filter. These add-ons can possibly be powered by following the RTL website's guide to turning on "Bias Tee" which I *think* puts electricity through the device to power any add-on boxes you add to this thing (not necessary, but possibly fun).WARNING: I did get the Zadig software to work and did the "replace driver" step BEFORE I got the SDR Console software downloaded and running, I'm not sure if that helped or made no difference.So, I took the paperclip away and just touched the outside of the dongle with thumb and index finger: it got reception on that station too! Sounded great and on the screen it said "American Bad Ass by Kid Rock", so it's getting the digital information from the station in addition to the music! With no antenna!So, in the SDR Console software you can pick all sorts of bands: AM, FM, SAM, ECSS-L/ECSS-U, CW-U, CW-L, GBM, NFM, WFM, LSB, USB, DSB, Wide-L, Wide-U. Each one of these will require a different antenna plugged into the dongle: some just a few inches of thin wire or paperclip...some might need 30' tall coax, lol.If you add a Ham It up PLUS box it upconverts a lot more bands to be listenable, but I think you have to tune the software radio to 125MHz...and then you can listen down to ULF, VLF, LF, MF and HF frequencies. On Amazon I ordered one of those (the cheaper circuit board only) and a blue metal box to put it in, along with some other junk that I'm not sure if I'll need, but it'll be fun.So, that's how I went from ZERO radio experience to listening (at least to FM) with my dongle.Oh, the dongle gets pretty darn HOT to the touch.Click "helpful" if this helped you. I'm pretty good at updating reviews with helpful information--give me a week or two to play with this thing and the other accessories I bought.I attached a blurry photo showing the nice interface and me holding my paperclip antenna> You can see I set the upper left frequency box to "101.1". The middle left box has the "BLM" broadcast FM option yellow click highlighted. The bottom left box has a 250hz filter selected (for no real reason, it was just on). To the left of my hand a block box says "ON 101.1 One Metallica" showing the Metallica song "One" was playing. AWESOME!!!Now I'll just be researching other frequencies and their antenna requirements and buying or hand-making various antennae for fun.Once I get the upconverter (Ham It Up PLUS) I'll make a 2' square VLF antenna which is super-easy. Get a 2' picture frame and wrap a wire around it 40-50 times or 120 times depending on which website I'm to believe, either way: super simple. Oh, THIS DONGLE ONLY RECEIVES...you can't transmit with it. Although I believe if you do get a transmitter of some the Ham It Up Plus converter does support transmitting down to 300hz. Not sure if that's wise of legal or whatever, but this dongle is for listening only--which is fine.Hope this helps total newbies!Mike from Detroit.