A few weeks ago we posted about the MFJ1708SDR automatic relay switch and how it can be used to combine an RX only SDR with a transmit capable radio. An automatic antenna relay switch is used to automatically ground the SDR's antenna input whenever the TX capable radio transmits in order to protect the SDR's front end from blowing up due to high TX power.
In this YouTube video Pete Sobye shows us the MFJ1708SDR working together with an Icom IC7300 HF radio and an SDRplay which is being used as a panadapter. For software Pete uses HDSDR and Omnirig which allows the PC to control the IC7300.
Over on YouTube icholakov has uploaded two new comparison videos. The first compares the Airspy HF+ against an RSP-1A on HF signals with a W6LVP receive loop antenna in a noisy suburban backyard in Florida.
Results appear to be quite similar for most signals, although we noted better performance from the HF+ on some particular weak signals surrounded by strong AM stations in the test such as the 810 kHz signal at 3:37, but lower noise on some signals received by the RSP-1A such as at 9:32. The tests were performed with a stock HF+ without any firmware updates applied so it's possible that the updates could improve results further.
In the second video icholakov performs the R3 mod on his Airspy HF+ and compares the results before and after. It appears that shorting R3 improves reception on MW slightly, and has little effect at higher frequencies. We also note that the R3 mod is mostly designed to mostly improve VLF/LF reception which is not tested in the video.
W6LVP receiving loop: Airspy HF+ vs. SDRPlay RSP-1A
SDRplay have recently released a PSA noting that a consignment of RSP-1A's was stolen from their manufacturing partner. This is important as SDRplay have decided to blacklist the serial numbers from this stolen consignment, and so the stolen units will not work at all, or may only work with a small number of programs. You may then be stuck trying to obtain a refund from the thief, although we believe that SDRplay would most likely help get you a legit device if you purchased a stolen one unknowingly. They write:
It has come to our attention that a consignment of RSPs that was recently stolen from our manufacturing partner have appeared for sale on eBay.
If you have any of the following devices and have purchased them from a non-approved reseller of SDRplay products, please contact admin@sdrplay.com and also contact the seller requesting a refund as the devices appear to have come from a stolen consignment of goods.
Please be aware that we have now black-listed the above serial numbers [see the original forum post for black list serials] and these devices will not work at all or will only work with a very restricted range of software. Anyone with any of these devices will not receive any form of support or technical assistance from SDRplay.
We are aware that the following eBay sellers have been selling devices from the stolen consignment:
Whilst we recognise that the above resellers may well have purchased the devices in good faith and in complete innocence, they have thus far failed to cooperate with us by explaining where they obtained the devices from. We will therefore be forwarding on their details to the Police so that they can investigate further.
We strongly recommend that people only purchase new devices from an authorised SDRplay distributor or reseller. A full list of authorised sellers is available from our website at:
It is a good time to also remind that there are many scam sellers on eBay. There are often fake listings for RTL-SDR dongles too, with scammers selling our RTL-SDR V3 for $10. These are simply fake listings and not stolen products. Those sellers rely on baiting people into purchasing at the lower price, and then they simply take the money and run. Normally PayPal or eBay will eventually refund you, but the dispute process could take several months. The real eBay account for our RTL-SDR products is "rtl-sdr-blog".
Further to our previous post on this matter, what people will not yet be aware of is that we also had a consignment of the new product that is due to be announced tomorrow stolen. We have had three separate consignments stolen and devices from all three have turned up on the same ebay account and so this suggests that a single person is responsible for all three thefts.
The decision to blacklist devices was taken to target the as of yet unsold devices to render them worthless and to make it pointless for the thieves to attempt to sell them. Of the consignment of RSP1As and RSP2pros, we have reason to believe that the majority remain unsold and so we took this action to render them worthless and deter the thieves from attempting to sell them.
By making this public in the way we did, we are giving the following messages:
1. We have end to end traceability of our products from the point of manufacture to the point that they reach our seller. If any are stolen, we will know and we will know the serial numbers of the devices taken.
2. Via the serial numbers we can render these devices worthless and so there is no point in attempting to sell them. The unwitting purchaser will become aware that they have received a stolen device and will want their money back.
3. Because we can make these devices worthless, there is no point in stealing any more of our products.
We made public the serial numbers of the RSP1As and RSP2Pros public and very clearly asked anyone who may have purchased one of these devices (believing them to be genuine) to contact us. Those that do and assist us in tracking down the thieves will be treated VERY sympathetically.
We will NOT penalise innocent people so that assumption that this is our intent is frankly WRONG!!
Our objective here is to gather as much information as possible so that it can be forwarded to the relevant law enforcement agencies to assist them in tracking down the culprits.
Some of the comments that we have seen on this subject by ill-informed people are massively wide of the mark. We have a responsibility to gather as much information as possible and forward it to the relevant authorities. We have also suffered a considerable financial loss, not just in terms of the cost of the goods, but also in terms of the lost sale opportunities. Some of the comments that we have seen regarding insurance cover are equally ill informed. For insurance claims to be taken seriously, you have an obligation to report the thefts and take all possible steps to assist in the recovery of the stolen goods that that is precisely what we are doing.
Finally, we have NEVER said that we will "brick" the devices. That is an incorrect assumption that has been made. Blacklisting and 'bricking' are two quite different things.
SDRplay have released a new product at this years Hamvention called the "RSPduo". The product uses the same technology as their previous RSP models, but this time includes a phase-coherent dual tuner architecture which allows you to tune to two completely separate 2 MHz bands of spectrum simultaneously. The RSPduo retails for US $279.95 + shipping. Their press release reads:
Today at the Dayton Hamvention, SDRplay is announcing the launch of a new Software Defined Radio product – the RSPduo.
The RSPduo is a radical new addition to the RSP line of SDR receivers from SDRplay. Architecturally, it is different from any previous RSP in that it features dual independent tuners, both piped through a single high-speed USB 2.0 interface.
The SDRplay RSPduo is a dual-tuner wideband full featured 14-bit SDR which covers the entire RF spectrum from 1kHz to 2GHz giving 10MHz of spectrum visibility. Initially using Windows based ‘SDRuno’ supplied by SDRplay, you can simultaneously monitor two completely separate 2MHz bands of spectrum anywhere between 1kHz and 2GHz.
Superficially the RSPduo looks identical to the highly popular RSP2pro and will be able to operate in a very similar way. However, it also allows a completely new and exciting set of usage scenarios such as:
1. Simultaneous monitoring of two widely spaced bands – e.g. 40m (HF) and 2m (VHF) 2. Mixing and matching applications simultaneously – e.g. ADS-B and ATC scanning 3. Phase and time coherent demodulation of two receivers
Scenario 3 is very difficult to achieve with two separate USB devices because of the uncertainty of USB latency. The RSPduo overcomes this limitation because all traffic goes through a single USB interface, thus enabling the possibility of the development of various types of diversity demodulation such as: spatial, frequency and polarisation which can bring huge benefits in terms of improved performance.
As well as adding a second independently controlled tuner, which in itself, offers a whole new set of exciting usage possibilities, the SDRduo features 14bit ADCs and a completely re-designed RF front end. These changes provide better RF selectivity and even more dynamic range, offering outstanding performance under extremely challenging reception conditions. The combination of performance and features makes the RSPduo our highest spec RSP yet and sets a new benchmark in the sub $300 SDR market.
Lots of great new videos are appearing on YouTube showing the Dual Tuner RSPduo in use. Just search for RSPduo in the YouTube Search bar.
While it appears that it will be a useful tool for multi-band monitoring, what we're looking forward to most are the phase coherent applications. Thanks to its phase coherence and predictable USB timing implementation, the unit should be very useful for passive radar and spatial filtering techniques, and we're hoping that SDRplay will be working on software for at least the latter. Multi-channel phase coherent applications are probably going to be one of the the next big developments in the SDR space so it's good to see low cost hardware with this potential coming out now.
We'll be reviewing the unit ourselves within the next month, so keep an eye out for that post!
Back in April we posted about QuestaSDR, which had just released the Android version of its SDR software. Recently QuestaSDR programmer 'hOne' wrote in and noted that a new update has enabled remote streaming in QuestaSDR.
To get set up, just run the Windows version of QuestaSDR on a PC, and open the "SDR Server" app. Once the server is running, you can connect to it via the Android version of QuestaSDR over a network connection. The server supports the RTL-SDR, Airspy and any ExtIO compatible device such as SDRplay units. As far as we're aware, this is the only Android app that currently supports streaming from non rtl_tcp compatible units such as the Airspy and SDRplay.
Steve Andrew has just released an alpha version of a Windows Spectrum Analyzer app for SDRplay SDRs that he's been working on. The app is currently still in alpha, meaning that all the features are not yet implemented. In particular, scans larger than the SDRplay's maximum bandwidth of 10 MHz are not ready yet. In the future the app will be able to scan swath's of bandwidth up to 2 GHz wide, similar to what SpectrumSpy for the Airspy and rtl_power for the RTL-SDR does.
We are pleased to announce the availability of the first cut of Spectrum Analyser software developed by Steve Andrew specifically for the RSP line of products. Please note that this is first alpha software and so it is still very much in development and some features are still to be added. Currently supported are:
RSP1 RSP2/RSP2pro RSP1A
This first alpha release gives a good idea as to the look and feel for the software. The main functional limitation is that sweeps of greater than 10 MHz are not currently supported. Steve is currently re-working the algorithms for providing wider sweeps than 10 MHz to improve sweep time and remove the issue of the DC spike in ZIF mode, so please bear with him.
We recommend using the software with AGC turned off and use manual control of the gain for better display stability.
Please use this forum thread to post any issues. Read the issues already raised and only post if the issue you have found hasn’t been raised. This will help Steve in his development.
Further development information can be found on the forum.
Over on YouTube channel Rate My Radio has uploaded a set of three videos showing how to use an SDRplay RSP2 as a low cost spectrum analyzer to measure the inter modulation distortion (IMD) performance of lower end hardware TX capable radios. The test can only be performed on radios that have IMD performance less than that of the RSP2, so very high end amateur radios cannot be tested.
The process is to use audacity to play two audio tones into the transmitting radio under test, and then the SDRplay is used to receive the output. On the SDRuno software you're then able to see the third order and higher IMD products. Later he also performs white noise IMD tests as well. Below is the video description:
We cover 2 Tone Testing, White Noise Testing, and how the later can be particularly useful in terms of station monitoring. Naturally, we show the effects of 'all knobs to the right' :)
Jarrad also covers how with just an SDR Play and a 'rubber ducky' antenna, station performance can be monitored in real time.
Why would a Ham want to do this? The answer is simple: To defend their station performance against that on air Expert, who got their ticket when you needed to send CW at 50WPN, who served in the military radio unit for 20 years, has 3 engineering degrees and worked as a professor at both MIT and Havard, not to mention the times they lectured at Cambridge & Oxford.
With an SDR Play and a bit of simple math, any OM can put such experts in their place.
Below we only post the third video of the three part series. Links to Part 1 and Part 2 are available in those links, or on his channel.
The RSPduo is the latest product from SDRplay, and it's main defining feature is it's dual RX channels. The two channels allow you to simultaneously listen to two stations that may be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Of course the same could be done cheaper with two separate RSP1A devices, however the advantage of the RSPduo is that the two channels are phase coherent. This opens up a lot of technical possibilities such as active noise cancelling/spatial filtering of an interfering signal or unwanted RF noise.
The basic idea behind phase coherent noise cancelling is that you have one antenna pointed towards your signal of interest, and the other pointing towards the interfering signal or coupled to the unwanted noise source. The unwanted signal/noise can then be subtracted from the signal of interest, resulting in a cleaner signal. This can only be done if the two channels are phase coherent like they are on the RSPduo.
Over on YouTube and his blog, ICAS Enterprises has been experimenting with noise cancelling on his RSPduo [Part 1] [Part 2]. The blog is entirely in Japanese, but all the relevant screenshots are in English, and we have provided Google Translated links. SDRplay have also provided a description of the process on their blog. The idea is to use Linrad to process the sound output of the two RSPduo channels from SDRuno. Linrad has capabilities that allow you to subtract two signals from one another.
In his experiments he receives a known 50 MHz CW beacon, and then injects an interfering test signal into the system. Then using Linrads 'signal adaption' feature he is able to completely remove the interference.
Recently we've found that there are now cloned units of SDRplay RSP1 and Airspy R2 units appearing on Aliexpress and eBay. (We won't link them here to avoid improving the Google ranking of the clone listings). This post is just a warning and reminder that these are not official products of SDRplay or Airspy, and as such you would not receive any support if something went wrong with them. The performance and long term software support of the clones also isn't known. Buying clones also damages the original developers abilities to bring out exciting new products like we've seen so far constantly with Airspy and SDRplay.
SDRplay
We've been in contact with SDRplay for a statement and they believe that the unit is a clone of the older and now discontinued RSP1, and not the RSP1A, despite the listings advertising RSP1A features such as additional filtering. SDRplay note from the pictures of the circuit board that the cloned unit's circuit board looks like an RSP1, and that the listing description is probably just blindly copied directly from the official RSP1A description.
Currently given that the price of the cloned RSP1 is $139, which is higher than the $109 cost of an original and newer model RSP1A, we don't see many taking up the offer.
Airspy
The Airspy R2 has also recently been cloned and now appears on Aliexpress with the lowest price being US$139 without any metal enclosure. Given that the price of an original Airspy R2 with metal enclosure is US$169, we again don't see many taking up the offer of the clone with such a small price difference.
HackRF
The HackRF is a different story in respect to clones. The HackRF design and circuits are open source, so unlike the closed source designs of the SDRplay and Airspy, in a way HackRF clones are actually encouraged and are legal. For some time now it's been possible to find cloned HackRF's on Aliexpress for only US$120 at the lowest, and from $150 - $200 including antennas and TCXO upgrades. This is quite a saving on the $299+ cost of the original HackRF. Reports from buyers indicate that the HackRF clones are actually decent and work well. The advantage of buying the original version is that you support Michael Ossmann, the creator of the HackRF, and may potentially get a better performing unit.
We've also seen clones of the HackRF Portapack on Aliexpress, which is an add-on for the HackRF that allows you to go portable. The clones go for $139 vs $220 for the original. No word yet on the quality.
RTL-SDR V3
We also note that recently there have been several green color RTL-SDRs released on the market with some being advertised as "RTL-SDR Blog V3" units. These are not our units, and are not even actual clones of the V3. These green units appear to just be standard RTL-SDRs without any real improvements apart from a TCXO. Some listings even advertise the V3's bias tee and HF features, but they are not implemented. Real V3 units come in a silver enclosure branded with RTL-SDR.COM.
Final Words
If you know how China works, you'll understand that it's highly unlikely that there is any legal recourse for SDRplay and Airspy to remove these products from sale. Once a product is popular it is almost a given that it will be cloned. It's possible that the clones might be able to be gimped via blacklisting official software, but that the companies would implement this is a stretch, and would probably be easy to get around. In the end while not ethical in a business fairness sense, these clones may be good for the consumer as they force the original designers to lower their prices and improve added value services.
If readers are interested in a comparison between the clones and original units, please let us know as we may consider an article on it.
Over on our store we've just released two new products for sale. The first is a metal case upgrade kit for the SDRplay RSP1A. It is similar to the previous enclosure that we sold for the RSP1, but no longer comes with an included BCFM filter since the RSP1A has this filter built in as a software switchable option.
Instead we've included a portable 7 meter (23 feet) long wire antenna spool (Tecsun AN-03L) with SMA adapter, and an 11 cm to 48 cm adjustable SMA telescopic antenna. The 7 meter antenna is great for HF SWLing, and neatly rolls up into the spool for travelling. The telescopic antenna is a portable VHF/UHF antenna that can plug directly into the SMA port of the RSP1A. Both antennas fit neatly into the supplied semi-hardshell carry case. The set costs US$29.95 including shipping and is available on our store, and will be on US Amazon in a couple of weeks.
The second product is the portable antenna set just by itself. The set includes the 7m Tecsun AN-03L antenna spool, the mono plug to SMA adapter and the 11 cm to 48 cm telescopic antenna. It can be used on any SDR with SMA ports. The set costs US$11.95 and is also available on our store. It will also be on Amazon in a couple of weeks.
Over on YouTube user Jan de Jong has uploaded a few screenshots and sounds on a video which shows that he was able to receive the ultrasonic sound of bats by connecting a small piezo speaker to an SDRplay RSP1A.
The piezo speaker used in reverse as a microphone appears to pickup bat echolocation sound waves which are typically between 20 to 200 kHz. The piezo is resonant in the 40 - 55 kHz range and converts sounds from that range into electric pulses that can be received directly by the RSP1A.
In the July 2018 edition of the UK based amateur radio magazine 'RadCom' Mike Richards wrote up a review of the RSPduo. This review is now available for free to download from SDRplay (pdf). The RSPduo is the latest product from SDRplay. Unlike previous models the RSPduo has two tuners on board which can be used to tune to two independent 2 MHz wide areas of the spectrum simultaneously. It currently retails for US $279.95 + shipping.
Mike's review goes over the design of the RSPduo and discusses it's dual tuning capabilities. He mentions that the most exciting prospect of the RSPduo is going to be the phase-coherent applications, such as active noise cancelling. At the moment no software for these applications is available, however SDRplay is working on it. In addition to this, Mike also discusses the new API, changes to the filtering and connections, and well as some notes on sample rates and decimation.
GOES 15/16/17 are geosynchronous weather satellites that beam back high resolution weather images and data. In particular they send beautiful high resolution 'full disk' images which show one side of the entire earth. As the satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, they are quite a bit further away from the earth. So compared to the more easily receivable low earth orbit satellites such as the NOAA APT and Meteor M2 LRPT satellites, a dish antenna, good LNA and possibly a filter is required to receive them. However fortunately, as they are in a geosynchronous orbit, the satellite is in the same position in the sky all the time, so no tracking hardware is required.
In the tutorial RSP2user notes that he's been using a $16 2.4 GHz WiFi grid dish antenna and the NooElec SAWbird LNA. In the past we've also seen GOES reception from Pieter Noordhuis who used a 1.9 GHz grid antenna from L-Com which seems to be a better match to the 1.7 GHz GOES frequency. However, 2.4 GHz WiFi grid antennas are much more common and therefore much cheaper. In the past there has been debate on whether or not these cheaper WiFi antennas would be good enough for GOES, so it's good to see that the cheaper option is confirmed to work, at least for the satellite elevations found in the RSP2user's part of the USA.
The SAWBird is a 1.7 GHz LNA which is required to improve SNR by reducing system noise figure, and to filter any interfering out of band signals. The SAWbird is currently not available for public sale, but NooElec have noted that it is due to be released soon. RSP2user also notes that the polarization of the dish is important, so the dish may need to be rotated, and also that flipping the secondary reflector significantly increases the gain at 1.69 GHz.
For software the XRIT demodulator from USA-Satcom for a small fee is used together with the SDRplay RSP2. As seen by Pieter Noordhuis' results, it's also possible to receive these signals with an RTL-SDR and Pieters free software. So it may be possible to reduce the costs of a GOES reception system by using an RTL-SDR, SAWBird and 2.4 GHZ WiFi grid antenna. With those components the total cost would be well under $100.
As a bonus, in later posts on his forum thread, RSP2user shows that the system can also be used to receive HRPT images from the low earth orbit NOAA 19 satellite by hand tracking the antenna as the satellite passes over.
Over on YouTube we've seen several reviews and installation videos of our SDRplay RSP1A metal enclosure + portable antenna set that we released for sale back in July of this year. The set comes with a metal enclosure, carry case, and a bonus 7m portable wire antenna spool and telescopic antenna. It costs US$29.95 including shipping and is available on our store or via Amazon.
The first review is by Tysonpower. His review is in German, but English subtitles are available on YouTube. In the review he notes that interference appears to be reduced with the metal case, and notes that the SDR is better protected against bumps.
[EN subs] RSP1A Metallgehäuse - ShortReview
We've also seen a review by Danny Shortwave And Radio DX which also shows the assembly process and shows how easy it is to transfer the PCB from the plastic case to the metal case.
Metal Case Upgrade for SDRPlay RSP1 and RSP1A from Amazon
Finally the third video by Koptervision also shows an unboxing, review and assembly timelapse.
SDRPlay Metal Case Upgrade - Unboxing and Assembly
Airspy is currently running a 15% Black Friday sale over on the manufacturers website iead.cc, and on their US distributor airspy.us. The coupon code is BF2018.
This results in an Airspy Mini costing only $84.15, an Airspy HF+ costing $169.15, an Airspy R2 costing $143.65 and a SpyVerter costing $41.65. This is the cheapest we've seen these products to date.
Over on Ham Radio Outlet, the RSP2 is currently reduced by $20, taking it down to a price of only $149.95. The RSP2 Pro is also reduced down to $192.95. Other SDRplay products, and products on their website appear to be not discounted.
HackRF
Over on SparkFun the original HackRF is 20% off, resulting in a price of only $239.96. It's still double the price of an Aliexpress clone, but it is an original unit. In the UK ML&S are also selling it for 15% off at £219.95. This is the cheapest price we've seen an original HackRF sold for.
Elad FDM S2
At the higher end of the SDR spectrum, we see that the Elad FDM-S2 is currently reduced by $51, resulting in a sale price of $529.
Most of these sales are expected to run until Monday, or until stocks run out.
Have you found any other great SDR deals? Let us know in the comments.
A couple of days ago we ran a post noting that the Airspy HF+ WRTH review was now available for public viewing. Now thanks to Jon Hudson of SDRplay for letting us know that the SDRplay RSPDuo review from WRTH has also been released for public viewing (pdf). The SDRplay RSP Duo is a 14-bit dual tuner software defined radio that is capable of tuning between 1 kHz - 2 GHz, with two separate 2 MHz bandwidths tuned to anywhere within that frequency range.
The review provides an overview of the RSPduo noting it's various features and discussing the SDRuno software. They also note that diversity reception would be an excellent application for a dual tuner SDR, but SDRuno does not support this feature as of yet. In their tests they also mention how they found very few overloading problems.
Jon would also like to note that the pricing in the review is incorrect. The RSPduo is US$279.95, and right now there is a seasonal $50 discount for US customers at HRO.
Thanks to "Lolo sdr" for submitting his videos that show his process for receiving and decoding Meteor M2 weather satellite images in Windows with an SDRplay and SDR-Console V3. Since the SDRplay is not supported by SDR#, it is not possible to use Vasilli's excellent Meteor Demodulator plugin (site in Russian, please use the Google Translate option) which is only available for SDR#.
Lolo's method gets around this limitation by initially recording an IQ file of the satellite pass in SDR-Console V3, then opening that IQ file in SDR# via the Fileplayer plugin, which is also by Vasilli and available here. The process is a bit of extra work, and the image isn't live, but the image comes out clearly in the end.
The videos are shown below, and subtitles are available in English, French and Italian via the YouTube player options.
Recibir y decodificar Satélite Meteor M2 con SDRplay, parte 1 de 2, grabar el pase, con subtitulos.
Recibir y decodificar Satélite Meteor M2 con SDRplay, parte 2 de 2, decodificar imagen y corrección.
The SDRplay team have released an updated version of a program called "rsp_tcp" (originally written by F4FHH Nicholas). This is a streaming IQ server for SDRplay devices, which is directly ported from the original rtl_tcp code that was designed for RTL-SDRs. The rsp_tcp code is fully compatible with the rtl_tcp protocol, so this should allow almost any software that accepts an rtl_tcp stream as an input to use an SDRplay device as the SDR hardware instead of an RTL-SDR.
The downside to using this server is that in order to be compatible with the standard rtl_tcp protocol, the software will downgrade the RSP data stream from 14-bits to 8-bits only, thus forfeiting the RSP's greater dynamic range. However, if a custom ExtIO plugin is used on the client software, then the full 14-bits can be restored.
This software is based on a fork of F4FHH’s version of RTL TCP Server. It has been updated to support the RSP features, but also contains an extended mode. The extended mode allows the client (via a compatible interface) to fully control all aspects of the RSPs, including notch filters, Bias-T enable and switching ports (where applicable)
We have provided binaries for Windows, Mac and RPi on our downloads page and the source code for all platforms can be found on our GitHub repository: https://github.com/SDRplay/RSPTCPServer
To utilise the extended mode, extra commands need to be sent from the client. We have provided an example of this in the form of an ExtIO plugin. You can find the Windows dll on our downloads page and the source code for the plugin on our GitHub repository: https://github.com/SDRplay/ExtIO_RSP_TCP
In standard mode, the server will be compatible with any RTL server client.
Thank you to reader Mikael for writing in and letting us know that over on Aliexpress a new clone of the SDRplay RSP1 has been starting to show up. The sellers are terming it as the "MSi.SDR" in reference to that fact that it uses the Mirics MSi chips, which are the same chips used in all SDRplay SDRs. Currently the MSi.SDR is selling for about US$65 on Aliexpress.
In the past we've seen other SDRplay clones but this is the first version in a dongle format, and the first time that it is actually priced cheaper than the original. SDRplay and Mirics are owned by the same people, and Mirics note that they have not distributed any chips in over 5 years, so it a mystery as to why there are suddenly a lot of unauthorized Mirics chips available on the Chinese market. It is unclear if SDRplay will be able to enforce their IP rights in China, but it seems unlikely.
Mikael has provided some good photos of the PCB from the version he received which we show below. It appears to be similar to the RSP1, so it is missing the new features and filtering improvements of the newer RSP1A. When connected to a PC it shows up as an RSP1, so all compatible SDRplay software including SDRuno and HDSDR with the official SDRplay EXTIO should function with it.
Mikael writes:
I have seen this sdr on various China sites for quite some time and lately on ebay as well, I was kind of sure it was a rsp1 in a new pcb layout as it claimed it to be 10khz to 2Ghz with a 10Mhz bw and 12 bit resolution and containing an msi chipset with a 0,5ppm tcxo.
I ordered one two weeks ago from aliexpress for about 67$ incl postage and got it in the mail today, it was delivered with a micro usb cable and a magnetic telescope antenna with an about 2m coax cord.
pluged it in and watched the device manager, as I have a rsp1a and a rsp2 I already had the drivers loaded for those, and sure, it was identified as an rsp1, so I did a quick test and and started hdsdr and and selected the extio.dll for the rsp1, it started up as it should and it behaves just as a rsp1, did a quick tunearound in the 3,5 and 7Mhz band and it was working well, have not done any in depth analys yest, will examine the pcb to see if there is any kind of filtering in there.
In an upcoming post we plan to compare the various SDRplay and Airspy clones available on the market with the originals.
SDRplay have just released a major upgrade to SDRUno, the official software for SDRplay RSP software defined radios. Along with various bug fixes, the most interesting new feature in version 1.3 is the frequency scanner. This allows SDRuno to automatically tune to active signals between a set frequency range. SDRplay writes:
Major new features include:
Frequency Scanning (for both frequency ranges and stored memory panel lists)
This release of SDRuno uses a new version of the Windows Service based API (3.02) and so users that also used other applications such as dump1090 and HDSDR with the previous version of the Windows Service based API (3.01) will need to download and install the latest versions of API, dump1090 and the ExtIO plugin from our website at https://www.sdrplay.com/downloads
We have produced two new video guides which describe the use of the Frequency Scanner and I/Q Output functions. Links to these videos along with many others can be found by going to the SDRplay Applications and support catalogue on https://www.sdrplay.com/apps-catalogue/ , and on our Youtube Channel on https://www.youtube.com/c/SDRplayRSP
However, the two new videos can be viewed directly by going to:
The ExtIO version of SDRuno can still be downloaded from our downloads page and is included in the SDRuno 1.22 release. Make sure to install it in a different directory to 1.3 otherwise it will stop 1.3 from working.
For any questions or help regarding this new release, please contact SDRplay support via our dedicated support system at: https://www.sdrplay.com/support
Finally, we recommend that all users join our community forum where there is a wealth of knowledge and help available for using our products and software in a wide range of applications and circumstances. This forum can be found at: https://www.sdrplay.com/community
