The Hobbyist's Guide to the RTL-SDR: Really Cheap Software Defined Radio Kindle Edition

I have to give the book three stars and myself one for buying it: It is strictly a Hobbyist's Guide. It tells you which software to download from where to receive basically everything that can be received with the RTL-SDR. It even tells you how to install the various (often commercial) pieces of software and where to click to make it all run. If there is more than one choice, it even tells you what - in the author's opinion- is the best choice. If, however, you wanted to LEARN anything about what modulation and encoding techniques are used for the different services that can be received or what signal processing the SDR needs to perform to decode it all, you've come to the wrong place. Grudgingly, I would have given the book even more stars, if it were not for the shoddy editing (I got the print edition with lots of erroneous word repetitions, "that" instead of "than" and other typing errors) and the lack of a keyword index at the end. What mislead me was the mentioning of GNURadio (which uses signal processing building blocks for everything) in the table of contents - it is mentioned as a tool, but not used for anything after that. So again, this book may be exactly what you are looking for (except for the bad editing and the lack of an index), but it is definitely not even close to a textbook or manual for engineers that would teach any underlying concepts whatsoever.

This book is a compilation of current data in the up and coming world of Software Defined Radio. If there is any doubt in you mind as to the future of SDR, this book quickly displays the possibilities of the science and gets your attention.I've noticed that even discrete radios are coming out now with internal SDR functions, allowing for more 'bang for the buck' so to speak, in the purchase of feature rich devices.I've been involved in electronics and radio since the days of vacuum tubes. This relatively new science has me fascinated and spell-bound to say the least. Even scanner radios are incorporating software defined functions that make tedious frequency inputting a matter of just entering a zip code! Just imagine that feature.Actually, SDR is like adding another dimension to physical radios. Once the physical world is translated into the digital world, the sky is the limit. If you doubt this at all, buy this book and skim through its various paragraph headers; or the detailed table of contents that in itself is the result of software sorting and publishing.I have a Kindle, but haven't as yet figured out how to 'move' the book onto it. The author mentions that this is an option, but I'm failing to accomplish that as of this writing.

I think this book should be called “The Missing RTL-SDR Manual.” It explained everything I needed to know in order to make my SDR dongle work, and this was especially important because the dongle came with absolutely no instructions. After covering the basics with detailed but simple written directions, screenshots, and a troubleshooting section (which I needed), the book goes into more advanced topics such as receiving digital communications from airplanes, tracking aircraft, displaying live images from NOAA weather satellites, using the Orbitron satellite tracker program, receiving images from the Meteor-M N2 polar orbiting Russian weather satellite, receiving and decoding weather balloon radiosondes, etc., etc. There is an antenna guide, an audio piping guide, a general frequency guide, a section for radio astronomy enthusiasts... The list goes on and on. If there were a Pulitzer Prize for easy-to-understand, useful, and complete instruction manuals covering a wide range of topics for beginners, I think this remarkable book would win it. The author, Carl Laufer, is to be commended for his truly excellent work!—Joe Benson

I am sure it's a great book if your dongle is already working and you are a computer expert. I ordered it to help me troubleshoot the dongle installation. The steps (which are identical online for free) were not specific enough to install it correctly and none of the things listed on the troubleshooting guide was applicable or it gave information I could not use I.E. "do such and such" but it would not explain how to do "such and such" , then to add insult to injury it gives a list of "other blogs and resources" on the last pages to help figure this out, which is why I bought the book in the first place! This was a complete waste of my time and money.

It was a compilation of many articles that I found over the internet in doing research into the topic. It was nice to have all the details in one location but not a lot of new content. Was worth the money to anyone who just got a RTL-SDR dongle and wants a single place to to read how to use it rather than search around for the information via search engines. I noted that a lot of people got the dongles for the RTL-SDR purpose and were frustrated in figuring how to use it. This book is for them.

This book IS the encyclopedia of the RTL-SDR USB Dongle Radio's! Very well written and positively overflowing with information, useage ideas, and other interesting suggestions! Great Read!!!

Lots of detailed work put into this book. I have only been 25% through it, but so far it is excellent. I have been in the radio biz for 40 yr and I can honestly say SDR tech is revolutionary to say the least. The geek factor will be high for those without experience, but the only way to get experience is to jump in and get your feet wet. There is much to explore over time in this book.

Very nice book. Easy to understand and informative as well. Good to have a quick jump and start doing stuff. If you are c Moletelt clueless and want something to actually teach you more about the things used or some of the other topics. Then you might wanna buy something else. But, overall this is a rather decent book to enjoy reading and learning from and also doing something practical.

This book is fairly expensive, but it does contain a large amount of information. However, it quickly moves into territory that leaves the newbie floundering. In particular, the huge range of signals that can be graphed, listened to, viewed and detected are given their technical names which leaves the interested beginner somewhat in the dark.There is a lot of help to be found on the Internet, so this is not too much of a barrier. I'm sure that it will be invaluable once the initial learning curve is surmounted.

I was dubious having bought ham radio books before but this is excellent for both a new user of SDR and beyond but probably of little use to a very experienced user. It covers in simple to understand language the basics but moves on is a steady logical progression to all the other things you can do. It even covers plugins and the antennas.Well worth the money and almost a must on your kindle if you are interested in the subject.Well done to the author. De EA5IZO

There are so many included links to other sources on the RTL-SDR and SDR in general, that make this title very hard to put down.Although one can start from their website and browse the links from there, I find the book so chock-full of useful info, it's worth considering buying the next edition when it comes out.Clearly SDR radio is a game changer for the industry.

Well written and informative. Be prepared to fast-forward over configuration details and descriptions of a wide variety of applications until you find the one you are interested in. (There will probably be more than one.)

Most of the material in this book is a reprint of articles from their Web site, although there is some new material. Having it all collected together may be useful to you. I was hoping to see a more detailed insight, but felt a little disappointed.