RTLSDR

• by skullkey
• November 16, 2012

We ordered these Videomate U620F through PC Palace (ask for Pierre) in a group buy – 16 units for R180 per unit.

In order to receive Tuks FM 107.2 MHz using gnuradio, I followed these steps:

1. Installed gnuradio using this script: wget http://www.sbrac.org/files/build-gnuradio && chmod a+x ./build-gnuradio && ./build-gnuradio
2. Then followed the instructions here: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
3. And finally downloaded multimode RX from here: https://www.cgran.org/browser/projects/multimode/trunk

When I connect the tuner stick, I get these messages in dmesg:

[ 7949.960326] usb 2-2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[ 7950.105514] usb 2-2: New USB device found, idVendor=185b, idProduct=0620
[ 7950.105525] usb 2-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 7950.105532] usb 2-2: Product: VMU6xx
[ 7950.105539] usb 2-2: Manufacturer: Compro
[ 7950.105545] usb 2-2: SerialNumber: 0020

and lsusb gives me

Bus 002 Device 004: ID 185b:0620 Compro

Now running multimode.py, I changed the following settings to look like this:

• The frequency to 107.2 (Tuks FM)
• AGC is on – automatic gain control
• Mode is WFM (80kHz)
• Mute Threshold -41.6 (as desired)
• Volume – pump it up!

Here is a screenshot of these settings:

Important you have to connect the antenna!

To get started here is some resources:

• http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
• http://www.rtlsdr.com/
• http://www.reddit.com/r/rtlsdr
• http://wiki.spench.net/wiki/USRP_Interfaces  <– easy start for Windows users

 

We ordered these Videomate U620F through PC Palace (ask for Pierre) in a group buy – 16 units for R180 per unit. In order to receive Tuks FM 107.2 MHz using gnuradio, I followed these steps: Installed gnuradio using this script: wget http://www.sbrac.org/files/build-gnuradio && chmod a+x ./build-gnuradio && ./build-gnuradio Then followed the instructions here: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr…