• RTL-SDR v3 first impression

    From Richard Menedetter@2:310/31 to All on Sunday, September 18, 2016 15:08:08
    Hi All!

    My RTL-SDR dongle arrived, and it is *very* neat ;)

    Came with a nice aluminium case, and I bought the kit with 2 telescopic antennas included.
    It is basically a DVB-T SDR on steroids.

    It has the the usual R820T2 tuner, but it comes with direct sampling enabled by
    default.
    So it is enough to change the command to "rtl=0,direct_samp=2" and it will enable direct sampling (0-24MHz).

    Here some known issues with the new v3 revision:
    Current Known Issues:

    We're constantly trying to improve our units and we always make note of what issues exist and how to fix them.

    Known V3 Batch 1 Issues:

    * Increased sideband noise on very strong narrowband signals. This should not be a significant problem as it only affects very strong signals. The hardware fix is to add about 100-220uF of capacitance on the 3.3V power line. Batch 2 will reduce this noise.
    * The bias tee does not work properly in direct sampling HF mode. This can be fixed by adding about 2.2uF of capacitance to the output of the LDO, before the
    inductor. Batch 2 will fix this.
    * The bias tee can be damaged by accidentally short circuiting the output for a few seconds while it is on. This damage only occurs on USB3.0 and USB2.0 ports that can provide up to 1A or more or current. Batch 2 will add a resettable fuse to prevent damage.

    CU, Ricsi

    --- GoldED+/LNX
    * Origin: Contentsoftaglinemaysettleduringshipping (2:310/31)