2023-09-13
I bought an RTL-SDR blog v4 dongle, and it's not working in Linux .. yet
A few weeks ago I saw 'buzz' all around about the RTL-SDR v4 dongle coming out: RTL-SDR Blog V4 Dongle Initial Release! and lots of people reporting clicking "buy now". I did the same, without even having a good reason to buy one. It is the third RTL-SDR dongle in the house, but the first one from RTL-SDR.COM. RTL-SDR dongles allow for the reception of radio signals in a wide range of frequencies where the processing of the signals is all done in the computer. I ordered it through AliExpress but making sure I got the right version via RTLSDRBlog Store on AliExpress. It arrived earlier and I can't get it to work with the Linux SDR software stack I use, even on the newest laptop, which uses:Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-================-==============-============-============================================================== ii gqrx-sdr 2.15.8-1build1 amd64 Software defined radio receiver ii gr-osmosdr 0.2.3-5build2 amd64 Gnuradio blocks from the OsmoSDR project ii librtlsdr0:amd64 0.6.0-4 amd64 Software defined radio receiver for Realtek RTL2832U (library)The dongle is recognized, but there is just noise, no signal to decode, even when I try strong broadcast stations. The previous RTL-SDR dongle receives the same stations fine, so it's an amplification or tuning problem. Checking the web finds librtlsdr/librtlsdr: Software to turn the RTL2832U into an SDR - GitHub which has a recent commit: add rtl-sdr blog v4 support · librtlsdr/librtlsdr@fe22586 · GitHub which sounds exactly like what I would need. So it's not working.. yet.