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Are there any real advantages with prebuilt RTL-SDR?

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unbuildpain

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A DIY SDR kit is being sold with regular DVB-T, DVB-T2, etc tuner card, it has to be assembled inside another PCB, and other components have to be soldered, the soldering could be bit complicated and might require special components, because SMD have to be soldered, thin wires have to be soldered to the IC points, which are near other SMDs. This DIY kit offers frequencies from 100KHz till 1.7GHz.

Whereas pre-built RTL SDR kits provide only 24MHz till 1.7GHz but they claim they replaced oscillators, capacitors, etc to reduce temperature and thereby making it stable at high frequencies like 1.7GHz. Is this marketing speak or is there any truth to it? Between these two, which one is better?
 

Depending on kit for sure the SMD stuff can be a challenge if you are not
experienced with it. Some of the stuff, to manually solder, requires optical
inspection equipment in order to do it, and T controlled soldering equipment.


Regards, Dana.
 

Depending on the specific SDR you buy, some can certainly go below 24MHz using what is called 'direct sampling mode'.
As Dana has said - unless you are comfortable soldering SMD parts, it can be a waste of your money to buy a kit.
It really comes down to what you want the SDR to do as to what the lower and upper ends of the frequency range need to be.
In the end, you get what you pay for.
(Note: if you do got for an RTL-SDR, make sure that you get a real one - there are a LOT of fake ones out there that simply cash in on the name.)
Susan
 
Aussie Susan said:
Depending on the specific SDR you buy, some can certainly go below 24MHz using what is called 'direct sampling mode'.
Click to expand...

Do they require soldering thin wires to pins of an IC or without such soldering?

Aussie Susan said:
As Dana has said - unless you are comfortable soldering SMD parts, it can be a waste of your money to buy a kit.
It really comes down to what you want the SDR to do as to what the lower and upper ends of the frequency range need to be.
In the end, you get what you pay for.
(Note: if you do got for an RTL-SDR, make sure that you get a real one - there are a LOT of fake ones out there that simply cash in on the name.)
Susan
Click to expand...

My interest in this is to learn more, I want to learn as much about anything as I can, soldering or putting these types of things together would be an essential life skill for everyone including me, like cooking, etc, so my main motivation with this to build myself an SDR, which seems like an invaluable tool with so much radio pollution around and also get practice in soldering.

My reason for an SDR is curiosity. Do you happen to know what one can hope to find below 24MHz till 100KHz?

How can I identify if an RTL-SDR is a genuine one or a fake one?
 

These go down to 1 Khz

www.sdrplay.com

SDRplay

Copyright (c) 2014-2023 SDRplay Ltd - SDRplay®,SDRuno® and SDRconnect® are registered trademarks belonging to SDRplay LtdRegistered UK company 09035244, 21 Lenten Street, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 1HG, UKRegistered Ireland company 3591295EH, The Black Church, St Mary’s Place, Co. Dublin, D07 P4AX...
www.sdrplay.com


Regards, Dana.
 

danadakk said:
These go down to 1 Khz

www.sdrplay.com

SDRplay

Copyright (c) 2014-2023 SDRplay Ltd - SDRplay®,SDRuno® and SDRconnect® are registered trademarks belonging to SDRplay LtdRegistered UK company 09035244, 21 Lenten Street, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 1HG, UKRegistered Ireland company 3591295EH, The Black Church, St Mary’s Place, Co. Dublin, D07 P4AX...
www.sdrplay.com


Regards, Dana.
Click to expand...
It's a bit too expensive for me.

This is my first foray into software defined radios and I don't know if spending so much at once is a good idea.
 

This is my first time, I thought having the widest coverage possible for the money would be better.
 

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