Upgrading (?) from 2-RTL-SDR V3 to 2-NOOELEC NESDR V5 - Advantages/Worth it?

[kingshootr]

Good day all,

I'm currently running (2) RTL-SDR V3 on a Windows 10 Surface Pro. I use SDR# for non-trunked stuff, and SDR Trunk for the rest (here in Glendale, AZ that's most Public Safety among others).

If I'm reading things correctly , the NOOELEC goes down lower in kHz, has better SNR across the board, etc. $70US +/-, which is well within the budget. I'm a "get the most out of everything" kind of person. Currently using a Moonraker Mobile SkyScan with a ground plane under it, but next year I'll be moving and am upgrading to a discone on a 30ft mast.

Just curious what others think on moving to a pair of NOOELEC units. Thanks.

 

[Dirk_SDR]

I have both and would say: no advantages.
Both use direct sampling to receive HF and lower, so no step up technically.
On VHF they are nearly equal.
The NESDR SMArt V5 has no Bias-T power. The Nooelec sticks with their small housings get quite hot and perhaps need cooling when used 24/7 in a closed room.
The NESDR goes down to 100 kHz (LW and up), the RTL-SDR Blog V3/V4 down to 500 kHz (MW and up).
If you go well with your RTL-SDR Blog V3, you could keep it or upgrade to the Blog V4 and get an upconverter for HF with a (very small) advantage on HF.
A real step up from your Blog V3 would be a receiver like the Airspy HF+ Discovery or R2, an SDRplay RSPdx or the new RSP1B.

 

[PDXh0b0]

I wouldn't call it upgrading to/from, more like adding snap-on to your MaC tools 😉 With the blog v3's you have the on/off bias-t availability
Nesdr v5's you get form factor, some slight performance improvements

With both, some air flow, shielded usb extensions & powered usb hub will give longevity & stable performance

Having four dongles gives you options, like running 2-3 with trunking and still being able to explore many of the other stuff like abd-s, ais, sonde tracking, hd radio, weather sats, vdl2 & much more

Having multiple dongles let's you keep doing what you are doing while experimenting with diy antennas

I have multiples of both and have not had a bad experience with either, had a dozen of them running 24/7 for a couple of years(air flow)

 

[kingshootr]

Hey - do we know each other?!? I was a Snap-On dealer for 12 years! (Won't find a MAC tool in my shop lol.)

I think the Airspy and others are a leeeetle above my comfort zone. But I appreciate knowing about them.

I had heard heat is an issue on a lot of these dongles. I put heat sinks all over the RTL-SDR's - they've been doing well for a year or so now. (Have I gone overboard on the chokes?)



I also like the ideas you noted - I didn't know trunking could benefit from more than 2 units - I just assumed 2 were needed to hear both sides of a conversation.

 

[PDXh0b0]

Hey - do we know each other?!? I was a Snap-On dealer for 12 years! (Won't find a MAC tool in my shop lol.)

I think the Airspy and others are a leeeetle above my comfort zone. But I appreciate knowing about them.

I had heard heat is an issue on a lot of these dongles. I put heat sinks all over the RTL-SDR's - they've been doing well for a year or so now. (Have I gone overboard on the chokes?)

View attachment 156962

I also like the ideas you noted - I didn't know trunking could benefit from more than 2 units - I just assumed 2 were needed to hear both sides of a conversation.

1987-2000 my snap-on guy worked the tri-cities in se Washington, wish I remembered his name, it was polish I think. Mid 90's I enrolled at community College to get the huge snap-on discount, well worth the enrollment fees 😄

Sdrtrunk..3 dongles you won't hear more live calls, but you'll record more..I listen to my sdrtrunk via trunking recorder

Ferrite clip-ons, unless you buy the quality one's, you never really k ow the mix, that said..I have amazon ferrite on everything , placebo? Idk

I'm sure there's parts of my setups ham people would throw rotten vegetables at me lol

 

[kingshootr]

1987-2000 my snap-on guy worked the tri-cities in se Washington, wish I remembered his name, it was polish I think. Mid 90's I enrolled at community College to get the huge snap-on discount, well worth the enrollment fees 😄

Ferrite clip-ons, unless you buy the quality one's, you never really k ow the mix, that said..I have amazon ferrite on everything , placebo? Idk

I'm sure there's parts of my setups ham people would throw rotten vegetables at me lol

Yep, students get a heck of a deal - good call.

Glad I'm not in the boat alone with the ferrites and my setup! Thanks for the help - I appreciate it.

 

[PDXh0b0]

It's no bites Presidents day over here lol

https://i.postimg.cc/pTpcNLFt/20240219-142717.jpg

 

[sunwave]

I think the Airspy and others are a leeeetle above my comfort zone. But I appreciate knowing about them.

Don't keep yourself on rtl-sdr. At least an SDRPlay RSP1a or a RSP1b is a worthy investment to increase your received signal quality. 1x RSP1 or b can eliminate lot of rtl-sdr's with the 10msps maximum sample rate. IF you think voice decode quality is great with RTL-SDR wait till you hear it on RSP's. I can run 1 RSP1a on Oklahoma City Metro Public Safety Trunking System, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

 

[Pape]

Depend on our need. I keep a good pool of SDR for any project I have. Some of the project end up staying other are dismantle and send back to the part bin.
If your current setup work for you, no point to upgrade. The only moment I would recommend a upgrade for SDR dongle is for the following:
The dongle is not a 0.5 PPM or is a of the E4000 chip.
For the price of 2 X Nooelec dongle you can get a RSP1B.

Once again depend on your need.

 

[scannerloser]

heya budday! So I'm not speaking from direct experience here on the v3 vs. v5, but I've read that one of the biggest things is that v5 allows direct sampling via the SMA as well as improved SNR and a few other things that seem to make the $33 investment maybe worth checking out, if anything for the expanded low end frequencies of getting down closer towards DC (ok, 100kHz, hah).

From their site:

"The best-performing low-cost RTL-SDR available anywhere! Compared with RTL-SDR v3, HF SNR is improved by up to 15dB, VHF & UHF SNR is improved by up to 6dB, tuning accuracy is improved by an average of 4x, and the frequency range is expanded all the way down to 100kHz."

Fwiw: I picked up the habit again very recently in PHX to pick up P25-2 traffic and it works wonderfully on one of my machines, and the others not so much - I'm not sure if its that they're under-powered or what.. but only my beefy i9 seems to be able to run sdrtrunk and other stuff with no issues, so ymmv.

Good luck!

 

[kingshootr]

Don't keep yourself on rtl-sdr. At least an SDRPlay RSP1a or a RSP1b is a worthy investment to increase your received signal quality. 1x RSP1 or b can eliminate lot of rtl-sdr's with the 10msps maximum sample rate. IF you think voice decode quality is great with RTL-SDR wait till you hear it on RSP's. I can run 1 RSP1a on Oklahoma City Metro Public Safety Trunking System, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Now I'm feeling stupid (what's new...) When I watched a YT video to set up SDRTrunk, I understood it to be that 2 dongles were required to listen in on trunked systems. Apparently that's not the case because I just yanked one and the software seems to run fine with the one only.

RSP1B

Hmmmm... This is under consideration - partly to figure out how to slip it past the war department.

heya budday! So I'm not speaking from direct experience here on the v3 vs. v5, but I've read that one of the biggest things is that v5 allows direct sampling via the SMA as well as improved SNR and a few other things that seem to make the $33 investment maybe worth checking out, if anything for the expanded low end frequencies of getting down closer towards DC (ok, 100kHz, hah).

From their site:


Fwiw: I picked up the habit again very recently in PHX to pick up P25-2 traffic and it works wonderfully on one of my machines, and the others not so much - I'm not sure if its that they're under-powered or what.. but only my beefy i9 seems to be able to run sdrtrunk and other stuff with no issues, so ymmv.

Good luck!

I'm running a Surface Pro 4th edition, so like an 8 year old i5, 8gig of ram - and it's always worked great.

 

[Pape]

In regards to Sdrtrunk you need as many dongles as it require to cover the frequency span.
Typical dongles cover 2.4 mhz therefore is all the frequency are all under that range you only need one.
Rsp1b cover 10 mhz.

 

[scannerloser]

Now I'm feeling stupid (what's new...) When I watched a YT video to set up SDRTrunk, I understood it to be that 2 dongles were required to listen in on trunked systems. Apparently that's not the case because I just yanked one and the software seems to run fine with the one only.

I'm gonna guess you might have watched the same video that I watched recently and it sure seemed like it made sense to me so I didn't question it either. I'm not sure if sdrtrunk was eventually updated after that walk-through was made, or what, but I will say that I'm glad I have two dongles because the amount of traffic in PHX is huge and you miss quite a bit without the second dongle running

 

[kingshootr]

In regards to Sdrtrunk you need as many dongles as it require to cover the frequency span.
Typical dongles cover 2.4 mhz therefore is all the frequency are all under that range you only need one.
Rsp1b cover 10 mhz.

When I had both plugged in, was I supposed to do something to set each one up for different frequency ranges, or does the software do that automatically?

 

[Pape]

Software do that by itself, unless you specify. You can go under tuners to see if they are in use or not and you can find where they are use.

 

[Pape]

Did a snap of a test I did
You can see at the end the status LOCKED, that mean they are in use and the number is the number of channels that is currently locked on.
In this case I have 12 actives communications, including controls, happening. Priority tag is a must in this case

 

[davejl2001]

Are SDRPlay devices plug and play with SDRTRUNK or do they require a driver like Zadig?

 

[scannerloser]

Hey - do we know each other?!? I was a Snap-On dealer for 12 years! (Won't find a MAC tool in my shop lol.)

I think the Airspy and others are a leeeetle above my comfort zone. But I appreciate knowing about them.

I had heard heat is an issue on a lot of these dongles. I put heat sinks all over the RTL-SDR's - they've been doing well for a year or so now. (Have I gone overboard on the chokes?)

View attachment 156962

I also like the ideas you noted - I didn't know trunking could benefit from more than 2 units - I just assumed 2 were needed to hear both sides of a conversation.

Really interesting heat sinks on those, do you have any data around how much heat they are dissipating? Would love to see it

 

[kingshootr]

These heat sinks?

I didn't think to do a before/after with a temp gun. The fingertip test says they're helping. The "un-sinked" sides are noticeably cooler (people aren't lying - these sucker's do heat up) and the fins get warm.

But from the incredibly scientific amazon description, they have to be doing something.

"The material quality is good, all the raw materials used meet the requirements, and the dimensional accuracy is accurate."

"Not easy to corrode, polarized treatment, no cracking on the surface, no foaming."

I mean, C'mon man - these have the polarized treatment and they don't foam! How great is that?!?

 

[Dirk_SDR]

Are SDRPlay devices plug and play with SDRTRUNK or do they require a driver like Zadig?

Sdrtrunk works with the SDRplay API.
The API must be installed for SDRplay receivers, e.g. by installing the newest SDRuno version.