Rtl Sdr Windows Driver

Video embedded  Posts about what software or drivers are compatable with RTL based SDR Dongles and where to download software or drivers.

Before we continue, we ll have to install the Windows driver for the RTL USB stick and then swap it for a low level access driver. The default driver assumes you ll.

This page is a guide aimed at helping anyone set up a cheap radio scanner based on the RTL-SDR software defined radio as fast as possible on a Windows system.Equipment Guide

Currently, the most common RTL-SDR dongle is the R820T which can be purchased here. See the Buy RTL-SDR dongles page for more information.

To get the most enjoyment out of RTL-SDR you will need a decent antenna. The stock antenna that is shipped with the dongle is okay for testing and will pick up a number of signals, but is generally considered as poor for any serious radio scanning. For beginners, a bunny ears antenna like those you get for TVs should already work much better than the stock antenna. The most recommended antenna for general scanning is a scantenna or discone due to their wide band receiving properties.Set Up Guide Tested on Windows Vista/7 XP Purchase an RTL-SDR dongle. The cheapest and best for most applications is the R820T dongle, which can be purchased here from Nooelec.SDRSharp is the easiest and most commonly used software defined radio software receiver for the RTL-SDR. Go to sdrsharp.com and head to the downloads page. Note that you must have the Microsoft .NET redistributable installed to use SDRSharp. Most modern Windows PCs should already have this installed by default, but older PCs running XP may need this to be installed.Ignore the downloads on the top of the page. Scroll down to where it says Important note for RTL-SDR users. Download sdr_install.zip from that link.

Extract sdr_install.zip to a folder.Double click on install.bat from within the extracted folder. This will start a command prompt that will download SDRSharp and all the files required to make SDRSharp work with RTL-SDR. Everything will be placed into a new folder within the sdr-install folder called sdrsharp. The command prompt will automatically close when it is done.

Plug in your dongle and do not install any of the software that it came with, but ensure you let plug and play finish trying to install it. If you ve already installed the software drivers it came with previously, uninstall them first.Open the newly created sdrsharp folder. Find the file zadig.exe. Right click this file and select Run as administrator if using Windows Vista/7/8. If you are using Windows XP, download the XP version from this page. If you are on Windows 8 you may get signed driver issues. To get around this we recommend downloading and using the newer Zadig version 2.1 from here.In Zadig, go to Options- List All Devices and make sure this option is checked.Select Bulk-In, Interface Interface 0 from the drop down list. Ensure that WinUSB is selected in the box next to where it says Driver. Note on some PCs you may see something like RTL2832UHIDIR instead of the bulk in interface. This is also a valid selection.

Click Install Driver. You might get a warning that the publisher cannot be verified, but just accept it by clicking on Install this driver software anyway. This will install the drivers necessary to run the dongle as a software defined radio. Note that you may need to run zadig.exe again if you move the dongle to another USB port, or want to use two or more dongles together.

Open SDRSharp.exe. Set the drop down box at the top next to the Play button to  RTLSDR / USB. Press Play. Your rtl-sdr software radio should now be set up and ready to use. If everything has worked you should be able to start tuning to frequencies. Be sure to also adjust the gain settings by pressing the Configure button up the top near the Play button.

TroubleshootingZadig takes a long time to install the driver, then fails

You have probably not run zadig in administrator mode. Make sure to right click zadig, and select Run as Administrator I don t see Bulk-In, Interface Interface 0

Ensure Options- List All Devices is checked. Some people report seeing something else other than the bulk in interface. It may also show up as the brand of your dongle or something prefixed with rtl. This option should work too.I don t see RTL-SDR/USB in SDRSharp

You may have downloaded a version without rtl-sdr support. Check that you followed the instructions in step 3 and downloaded the version under the heading Important note for RTL-SDR users. Zadig gives System policy has been modified to reject unsigned drivers  error in Windows 8

Windows 8 can cause signed driver issues with zadig. Some users report getting the error System policy has been modified to reject unsigned drivers. To solve this download and use the newer Zadig version 2.1 from here.Reception in SDR seems very poor/receiver is insensitive

Make sure you have increased the gain slider which can be accessed by clicking on the configure button. Also, in poor reception areas using the stock antenna indoors may not be sufficient.SDR gives error Application failed to initialize properly 0xc0000135.  Click OK to terminate.

This might mean that you do not have the. NET 3.5 Framework installed.How to set the Gain

The gain can be adjusted in SDR by clicking on the Configure button. When tuning the RF gain you are trying to get the signal as strong as possible, whilst keeping the noise floor as low as possible. Start with a low gain setting, and slowly increase the gain slider. Watch in the frequency spectrum as the signal strength increases, but stop just before the point at which the noise floor starts to rise.

The noise floor is the part of the frequency spectrum where there are no signals.SDRSharp Plugins

A list of SDRSharp plugins can be found here.SDRSharp Guide

A good guide to learning how to use SDRSharp and what all the options do can be found here. Another great illustrated guide can be found here.Other SDR Windows Software Compatible with RTL-SDR

HDSDR – An advanced version of the WinRad SDR software. A free software defined radio package.

SDR-Radio v2 – A free Windows program for software defined radio.

SDR-J – Free Windows program capable of also decoding DAB signals in software.

See the Software Guide for a big list of other compatible RTL-SDR software.

A good guide to getting started on Linux and GNU Radio can be found at this blog post here.

Note that if you want to run Linux in a virtual machine it has been reported that performance with VirtualBox is rather poor due to it s slow USB connection. VMWare Player on the other hand has good performance.Installing SDR with Mono in Linux

Install Mono and the Monodevelop environment.sudo apt-get install mono-complete

sudo apt-get install monodevelop

Install libportaudio for soundsudo apt-get install libportaudio-dev

sudo apt-get install libportaudio2

Use svn to checkout SDRSharp. If you don t have svn installed use sudo apt-get install subversion to install subversion.svn co https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/sdrsharp/trunk sdrsharp

We first need to replace the version string in the SDR solution file as Monodevelop currently does not recognize solution files created by Visual Studio 2012.sed -i s/Format Version 12. 00/Format Version 11. 00/ SDRSharp.sln

Open the solution file with monodevelopmonodevelop SDRSharp.sln

In Monodevelop set the build to Release x86, then go to Build- Build All

Now we need to first symbolically link libportaudio to the Release folder where SDR was just built.cd Release

First we need to find out if you are running a 32-bit x86/i686 OS or a 64-bit x64/x86_64 OS. To do this typeuname –m

If you see the result as i686, you are running a 32-bit Linux so type inln -s /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libportaudio.so.2 libportaudio.so

If you see the result as x86_64 you are running a 64-bit kernel so typeln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libportaudio.so.2

Add RTL-SDR support to the SDRSharp.exe.config file by opening it with a text editor and finding the line that contains the text SDRSharp.RTLSDR.RtlSdrIO,SDRSharp.RTLSDR. Uncomment that line by removing the surrounding characters.

Now you can run SDRSharp by typingmono SDRSharp.exe.

When you plug your RTL device in for the first time, Windows may request a driver or automatically install a driver from Microsoft - this is OK as it will be replaced.

Until recently the only quick and easy option for using RTLSDR was with WINSDR and HDSDR with the EXTIO plugin from spench.net. This has all changed now and all you need is the very nice, fast and open source SDR. It natively supports RTLSDR hardware along with FUNCUBE and the audio card and is much kinder on the CPU than the others. It also has code to deal with the so called DC spike so that you don t see it.

You may converse directly with the author prog on IRC at Freenode on channel sdrsharp.

To get SDR working in Windows you need 3, no 4. things:

A compatible Realtek RT2832U device

A functioning Windows XP or better PC. NET 3.5 installed. CPU s from Pentium 4 up at 1GHz and above are recommended. For now Atom type CPU s may well struggle.

When you plug your RTL device in for the first time, Windows may request a driver or automatically install a driver from Microsoft - this is OK as it will be replaced in the next few steps. Don t install the software on the CD that comes with the device.

Download the latest version of Zadig. You will need to use 7zip to extract it from the. 7z file.

Run the Zadig.exe file and you should see the following with an empty list.

Click on Options and select List All Devices.

Choose the one that says Bulk-In, Interface Interface 0. This should be the primary endpoint of your RTL device.

Note that if you insert the dongle into a different USB port you may have to use Zadig again. It seems that you can change which driver is loaded depending on the USB port used. So you could use one USB port for RTLSDR and another port for using the dongle to watch DVB-T with the supplied Windows application.

Download the latest development version of SDR.

Unzip it to a folder - you don t need to run an installer which is nice for a change.

Run SDRSharp.exe and you should see the following window.

To get started set the following:

Set the centre frequency to 88,000,000 This is 88MHz, the start of the FM radio band in most countries.

Set the Front End type from Other to RTLSDR / RTL2382U

If all is working the Front End button should go from grey text to black text.

You should now see an orange waterfall display in the bottom half and a dancing blue spectrum in the top half. By clicking and dragging on the blue spectrum you can conveniently change the frequency. In the example below I have dragged the spectrum and centred on an FM station. All going well you should hear the audio coming out of the PC speaker.

For more information have a look at the short guide on the SDR site for more information. Also join in the livey discussion on IRC at Freenode on channel rtlsdr two s.

This page is a guide aimed at helping anyone set up a cheap radio scanner based on the RTL-SDR software defined radio as fast as possible on a Windows system.

RTL-SDR RTL2832U is a SDR radio that uses a cheap 20 DVB-T TV tuner dongle with the RTL2832U chipset. Using special drivers the dongle can be turned into a.

Driver Installation Instructions. rtl_sdr, rtl_tcp, rtl Plug your RTL device in for the first time, Windows may request a driver or automatically install a.