Pick an RTL that does the ranges you are interested in and I doubt you can go wrong. The rtlblog v4 is recommended but hard to get ahold of now. They receive only but actually work quite well when paired with correct antenna.
HackRF is not as good at listening -- a bit deaf -- but does provide much larger bandwidth and obviously the low powered half duplex tx ability.
If you just want to grab random signals around and explore, get a cheap RTL.
If you really want to go back and fourth with a device, to modify data packets etc get a hackRF.
If you want to push beyond those limitations, you'll probably already know what you're shopping for next at that point.
Beware, you'll end up acquiring many different radio devices and then likely start building antennas out of scrap, buying a nanovna, and falling deeper and deeper into the magical rabbit hole!
> Pick an RTL that does the ranges you are interested in and I doubt you can go wrong.
Last time I was down this rabbit hole (when cheap RTL-SDRs were completely new), my favorite fun test was ADS-B, so let's say I wanna play around 1-1.1 GHz at first.
One day I also wanna sit down and do GPS from scratch, "by hand", so let's say I also wanna do 1.57 GHz (which I understand is becoming borderline difficult for the cheapest devices?).
Even though these devices are cheap, I'd rather avoid needlessly extra-shitty devices or my money going to copycat leeches.
Any recommendations in light of these requirements? Thanks a lot!
> HackRF is not as good at listening -- a bit deaf -- but does provide much larger bandwidth and obviously the low powered half duplex tx ability.
Yeah I know it's in a completely separate category, I just derail and start daydreaming ;-)
> Beware, you'll end up acquiring many different radio devices and then likely start building antennas out of scrap, buying a nanovna, and falling deeper and deeper into the magical rabbit hole!
RTL-SDR can do GPS L1CA signal processing easily, but you need to use the RTL-SDR Blog dongles not the blue no-name DVB-T dongles as:
- You need stable clock for the processing algorithms to be happy, RTL-SDR blog dongle have 0.5ppm TCXO while who knows what crystal they use on the no-name ones
- RTL-SDR blog dongles have bias-T, and a lot of GPS patch antennas are active antenna that need power from the coax to power the LNA
You are of course absolutely correct! Let me rephrase: "from scratch" once the signal has been captured and I've avoided all the ways that hardware will fuck me over due to my lack of skills :-)
I phrase this to my kids in a different way, but same exact sentiment: The only limit these days is a modest amount of resources and the ideas in your head.
ie. Feature film? Sure. Music album, sure. Your own electronics project designed at the kitchen table, ordered from china, housings printed on the 3d printer -- all from the table.
It is an absolutely astoundingly low bar of entry these days to almost anything you'd like to create or build.
I have these both installed as 'extensions' on my homeassistant.vm and it works wonderfully. Any device that is on my local network, ads blocked. If I want to access my home network and/or block ads when mobile, tailscale gets connected, ads blocked. highest of recommendation, I agree.
I'm just working on my first app (thanks to AI...) and if you have a new dev account created sometime after 2023 they are making you do a 12 person, 14 day beta run before anything else occurs, apparently.
It gets worse! If Google decides the people in your test don't engage enough and/or you didn't respond to their feedback, they may not give you production access. I've got a game that's available on iOS, I released there first and did lots of testing to deal with the low-hanging bugs. After doing the 14 day test Google emailed me:
Possible reasons why your production access could not be granted include:
- Testers were not engaged with your app during your closed test
- You didn't follow testing best practices, which may include gathering and acting on user feedback through updates to your app
I basically used this guide, but a different ESP32 device (so I had to change the pinout, but otherwise...). It's currently plugged into mains power, but in the future when I make additional, I'm aiming to make them solar + battery powered so I can stick them in more 'remote' areas.
Give it a go! The quality is astounding vs a security cam.
Just seconding this so other framework owners may give it a try. The speakers on my 13" are pretty bad, but using easy effects made them plenty "fine". Without, it sounded like absolute trash.
These are the ones I have been using. I've generally stuck with the lappy_mctopface variant. I have no idea about the naming, but these presets have been good enough for me without much messing about at all!
I don't know. I'm sitting here with a framework laptop consciously NOT updating it because I'm in no mood to have my computer SOL because a company can't seem to get their shit together?
Of note, I really like my framework, and I have installed BIOS updates on the past without issue. However, there have been a lot of firmware problems and fixes that are not fixes (battery related) and then bios updates that apparently cut the sound volume down to far lower levels than before the update, etc.
A user shouldn't have to worry about installing a BIOS update from the manufacturer causing the machine to die without circumstances like power loss, etc.
I feel personally that if such a BIOS update bricks someone's device, it should unquestionably be "we are sorry, let us send you out a new board asap". They can then reflash using pogo pins and send them out to other customers.
Accountability these days doesn't exist anywhere. It's making the world shit.
HackRF is not as good at listening -- a bit deaf -- but does provide much larger bandwidth and obviously the low powered half duplex tx ability.
If you just want to grab random signals around and explore, get a cheap RTL.
If you really want to go back and fourth with a device, to modify data packets etc get a hackRF.
If you want to push beyond those limitations, you'll probably already know what you're shopping for next at that point.
Beware, you'll end up acquiring many different radio devices and then likely start building antennas out of scrap, buying a nanovna, and falling deeper and deeper into the magical rabbit hole!