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At the moment I have 5x RTL-SDR dongles streaming into a box on different bands (137, 433, 912, 978, and 1090 MHz). They pick up all kinds of things, from local weather stations to the water meter for my condo to ADS-B/UAT transmissions from local aircraft. I even see the tire pressure monitor signals from cars that drive by (some of you guys need to add air!).

Mostly it's just fun. I like peeking at all the ambient transmissions in the area.

A while back I was more deeply involved in the SDR space and even reverse-engineered some pager signals. At least a few years ago, pagers were still widely used in hospitals (totally in plaintext, by the way).

by bartwr11 minutes ago|

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I am learning about radio and modulation using SDR (with professor Claude - incredible for learning! Especially if you know exactly what you want to learn and have a strong enough background in somewhat related fields - audio and image DSP for me - to make exercises it writes for me short, relatable, and yet illuminating) and our second lesson after cheap 433 remotes was FLEX and pagers - plenty of that stuff in the city, with about half messages from a hospital a few blocks away. Still very widely used in the US (I live in NYC). Seeing what gets broadcasted there 100% unencrypted was quite a shock. Patient names, ages, and conditions; doctor names, rooms, departments, requests for medications and assistance... Insane amount of super private PII.

by bb884 hours ago|

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It is cool to do. But there are professional uses for it, particularly like finding interference or noise. You can ask things like: "How crowded is my 2.4 GHz spectrum?"

The RTL SDR is the gateway drug into SDR's. The bandwidth is limited, so don't expect to be capturing HDTV Streams. But it's certainly possible to listen to AM/FM, Ham Bands, VHF/UHF signals, etc.

If you don't want to buy an RTL-SDR, you can search KiwiSDR which is a streaming SDR for frequencies under 30MHz. You can also connect to KiwiSDR's worldwide.

Then if you get the itch, you can go get your a HackRF, a ham license, or whatever else scratches it.

by 2 hours ago|

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by dekhn4 hours ago|

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I've used it to identify transmissions in my neighborhood in the public (ISM) band, listen to various radio broadcasts outside the normal AM/FM, and best of all, track all the planes in my area (ADS-B).

by BlackRabbit14 hours ago|

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Satdump group uses them receiving all kind of weather satellites. They are mastering S-/X-Band stuff for ages already.

Ham radio operators looking forward using them for 13cm and 5cm band stuff.