Tuesday, August 8, 2017

ColibriNANO USB SDR Receiver Reviewed

At first glance, the ColibriNANO SDR looks like another cheap SDR dongle. But after watching [Mile Kokotov’s] review (see video below), you can see that it was built specifically for software defined radio service. When [Mile] takes the case off, you notice the heavy metal body which you don’t see on the typical cheap dongle. Of course, a low-end RTL-SDR is around $20. The ColibriNANO costs about $300–so you’d hope you get what you pay for.

The frequency range is nominally 10 kHz to 55 MHz, although if you use external filters and preamps you can get to 500 MHz. In addition to a 14-bit 122.88 megasample per second A/D converter, the device sports an Altera MAX10 FPGA.

In addition to interfaces to different software packages, the dongle works with remote software. The idea is to put the dongle and an antenna somewhere advantageous (that is, high and radio-quiet) and then use a Raspberry Pi or similar computer to pipe signal over the Internet.

If you don’t want a dongle, we can endorse [Lukas’] build from scratch. If you are looking more for a getting started resource, check out what [Richard Baguley] had to say about SDR.

 


Filed under: radio hacks

via radio hacks – Hackaday http://ift.tt/2unJYYX

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