As usual, it has been quite a while since I’ve posted anything to the site, but I figured since I spent some time learning about Software Defined Radios (now that I finally got a bit of down time from work) that I’d share what I learned. One caveat, I did have a purpose in learning more about SDRs and that was to be able to listen to and record all the Chicago Police and Fire dispatch radio traffic on the old analog radio system. After a bit of trial and error and testing a few of the hardware and softwar
Background
SDRs are hardware devices, controlled by software and the configuration of that software, that allow us to use the radio hardware to tune to and receive radio transmissions, and in some case transmit radio as well, within the spectrum covered by the hardware device. These devices range from $25 on the low end to $1,000’s on the upper end, and in this post I’ll mainly focus on the lower end devices (RTL-SDR and Nooelec SMART NESDRs). The links to the hardware, software, and other sites mentioned in the vid