TheOrc.devOregon Radio Company LLC · Springfield, OR

rtl_test -d 0 | grep -i nooelec

Nooelec gear with OrcSDR

OrcSDR is only as good as the receiver plugged into the Tab5, and the Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5 is one of the four dongles I've fully tested it with. Nooelec is now sending me a Ham It Up Plus upconverter, which is the next step down the band: HF, and everything below it.

Here's the Nooelec gear on my bench, what each piece does with OrcSDR, and what I've actually verified.

the hardware

A black Nooelec NESDR SMArt dongle cabled into the USB-A port of an M5Stack Tab5, with OrcSDR's FT8 receiver open at 14.074 MHz on screen

Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5

RTL2832U + R820T2 · TCXO · aluminium case · fully tested with OrcSDR

A receiver I trust on the Tab5. It plugs into the Tab5's USB-A port and OrcSDR drives it with my own driver, no PC in the loop. In OrcSDR's release testing it pulled in a 453.925 MHz test signal about 46 dB over the noise and came back cleanly from five unplug and replug cycles. The TCXO keeps it from drifting as it warms up, which matters for narrow signals.

In the photo OrcSDR's FT8 receiver is open on 20 m (14.074 MHz). On its own the SMArt v5 is supported from 24 MHz up in OrcSDR, so HF like this is exactly what the Ham It Up Plus is for.

SMArt v5 at Nooelecon AmazonOrcSDRdongle guide

Nooelec Ham It Up Plus arriving · testing planned

HF/MF/LF/VLF upconverter · 125 MHz TCXO · switchable LNA · passthrough

Most RTL-SDR dongles can't hear much below about 24 MHz. The Ham It Up Plus sits between the antenna and the dongle and mixes everything from 300 Hz to 65 MHz up by 125 MHz with a temperature-compensated oscillator, so shortwave, ham HF and longwave land in the 125 to 190 MHz range the dongle receives well. It has a built-in HF low-noise amplifier you can switch out, and a passthrough mode so you can still reach the higher bands without unplugging it.

OrcSDR doesn't support it yet. Today OrcSDR only knows about the upconverter built into the RTL-SDR Blog V4; there's no setting yet for an external converter's 125 MHz offset, and below 24 MHz it only tunes on dongles with their own HF route (the V4's upconverter or the V3's direct sampling). Adding that offset and testing it with this module is the plan once it arrives.

Ham It Up Plus at Nooelecon Amazon

built and tested on

  • tested NESDR SMArt v5 on the Tab5. Fully tested with OrcSDR, one of four dongles alongside the RTL-SDR Blog V3c, V4 and V4L. In the v0.3.0-beta.2 release tests: a 453.925 MHz signal about 46 dB over the noise, and five unplug and replug cycles. Details in the dongle guide and the receiver table.
  • planned Ham It Up Plus with OrcSDR. Not tested yet. It needs an upconverter offset setting in OrcSDR first.

That's what I've verified myself. Anything not listed here hasn't been tested yet.

thanks

Thanks to Nooelec for supporting the project with hardware. The Ham It Up Plus is what lets me take OrcSDR down into HF on dongles that can't get there on their own.

Nooelec folks, and anyone else who wants to work together: erik@theorc.dev.

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Erik Elfstrom · Oregon Radio Company LLC · Springfield, Oregon. Nooelec, NESDR, SMArt and Ham It Up are Nooelec's names. Photos are my own; the converter diagram is mine too.