Nooelec NESDR Smart HF Bundle: 100kHz-1.7GHz Software Defined Radio Set for HF/UHF/VHF Including RTL-SDR, Assembled Ham It Up Upconverter, Balun, Adapters

This is a great piece of tech and I have barely scratched the surface in its capabilities. It was purchased to be able to listen to FT8 transmissions. In the future it will be used in many ways I can not imagine yet. Please note that a great deal of learning is needed to truly get this thing working how you need it too. Also the infinite levels of tweaking will kill a mere mortal. First off I would like to point out that after I purchased this I received an email from the seller outlining that the drivers are very important. Thank you to the seller! Follow their directions and it is pretty painless, as long as you are familiar with software installation. If not then Youtube is your friend. This is the first time a vender has warned me ahead of getting their product. The CubicSDR software that they ask you to use, I did not like, but it works. May be fine for you. So far I have settled on using AirSpy SDR, it pipes the audio to a Virtual Cable software and it then sends it to WSJT-X. Just search this on Youtube if you are interested. It seams to display everything I am wanting. Waiting on my cables to hook up my radio. Stinking covid... I watched a pile of video's and read what I could find before I got this. If there is a better one for the cost, I did not find it. There are more expensive ones that will transmit as well. Now I want to call out the guy that said you could use 75 ohm TV coax when you are listening only... Well if you tweak it for about 10 hours, sure you can hear something. Maybe even get some FT8 through it. But no you will not like it at all. I'm no rocket surgeon, but I can tell you what I see. The Ham It Up converter that I received requires a -125,000,000 Shift to be put into the SDR software. It is important, at least in AirSpy that the offset has comma's in it. Even though it shows dots in the menu. This was close to an hour of Googling. This guy does run hot! So far it has not given out. But I place it where it can get as much air as possible. Lessons I learned the hard way: Extend your USB cable before you use a length of cable between the SDR and your antenna. I found that if I had a 16 foot of "China Best RG-58u" in the mix, I received no signals that could be processed for FT8 and mostly noise. The cables and adapters just produced to much loss i guess? The connectors that I received are good. Use a meter to test the ones you get, just to be sure. Cables that you buy need tested as well. The antenna's that you get, make sure you know which one to use. Bigger is not always better. Look online for an antenna calculator and plug in the frequency you want to hear and it will give you the 1/4 wave length, then setup your antenna accordingly. Look up this kit on youtube and see how to configure the balun for longwire and dipole antennas. This is the only antenna that has worked for me. The others are for wave lengths I'm not interested in yet. One antenna will not do everything. I did try using this on a Raspberry Pi 3b+ and a Pi 4 2 gig and I found that the cpu was not enough to get rid of clipping in the audio. Pi's are great, but not for this in my mind. The software was running the cpu's at 100%. I now run it on a Windows 10, i7 . Nothing is lost and it runs at 20% cpu.

coolest hobbie you can get into

Good value for money, well made. While it is an entry level model, It functions well as advertised and is recommended for beginners as it’s software compatibility is superb across various operating systems. It is fully supported by most open source SDR software.

The other reviews had me ready for a rabbit-hole of setup. I thought it was going to take hours getting this kit to work on my computer, with lots of troubleshooting. I have next to no experience with radio but was able to get this up and going within minutes. All I had to do was 1. Insert the USB SDR 2. Install WinSDR drivers using Zadig utility 3. Install SDR software (you might need to run a batch file in your selected software's install folder to enable SDR) 4. Enter the -125 MHz offset into your software. Turn off offset when Ham It Up isn't upconverting signal. That's it. It's not that hard as some people make it out to be. It's a nice kit that works as expected and I'm really happy with my purchase.

This is a great starter kit. The first receiver dongle was intermittent, which resulted in a replacement being sent quickly. Since then, I bought a second RTL-SDR dongle. And neither the replacement or new one has given me the first problem. I'm buying a second up converter shortly. Be sure you install the driver EXACTLY as instructed. NOTE ON SPURS: Not all SDR software allows this receiver to perform at its peak. Too many programs run AGC much too high - it makes things seem more sensitive, but this causes overloading, and stations showing up everywhere. Receive quality almost rivals some of my "Big Name" ham radio gear under many circumstances.....rivals, but not exceeding.... I use the SDR receiver on a laptop with Windows 10, as well as a Motorola Z2 Play and Samsung Tab 4 via OTG adapter cables so the dongle can receive power from a LiION battery which powers the up converter as well. The dongle will definitely get quite warm, this is completely normal!

This is a BARGAIN! Ive had so much fun playing with this SDR. Some Caveats, follow the emailed instructions to the letter. The instructions for the driver loading software are incorrect. They say the device will show up as NE SDR.... it does not... it shows up as Bulk Device.... the instructions tell you the address of the device which does show up correctly. Once the driver was loaded I loaded the software and have had a blast with it.... no its not a Flex Radio... but it is a well built little sdr thst you can shove in your laptop bag so you have a radio with you on business trips... the Ham it upconverter is great too. One thing the description is wrong about saying NE SDR covers 100 khz to 1.7 GHz...this is incorrect. NE SDR natively covers 25 MHz to 1.7 GHz. You need to use the upconverter to receive below 25 MHz. You also need to put a -125 Mhz offset in the SDR software. Once you do you can receive HF Ham Stuff and shortwave. This is really a good deal. Highly recommended!

when it works it works fine, and the upconverter works great too there's nothing wrong with it. I spent hours and hours playing with this thing, but the problem I experienced was that the USB connection was extremely sensitive due to corrosion on the contacts that came from the factory and/or a poorly designed driver. Even just flipping the switch on the upconverter consistently sent a strong enough vibration through the short SMA jumper connected to the device that would cause the USB to rapidly begin to disconnect and reconnect multiple times making the windows USB connect/disconnect sounds many times and then crashing my SDR software. I then made the mistake of leaving the antenna connected to it during a light snow storm and the static electricity killed both the radio chipset and it's USB controller and it probably also would've killed my computer if I had left the USB plugged in

This is a great technical hobby, and this is an inexpensive way to get into it! There's lots of excellent free and open source software available no matter what computer you hook it up to. There's a bit of a learning curve, but once you get going with it there are lots of things you can do with it.

Great little device.... some assembly instructions would have been nice but youtube had all the answers. In my opinion the manufacturer would do well to include some freeware just so folks could get it up and running right away and not have to spend hours searching the internet but once you have it sorted out its a great device to work with. I opted for the whole bundle to include the "Ham it up box" because I wanted access to the ham bands.... and it works really well.... with a decient antena....and when you have figured out that you have to modify the software to operate on those frequencies. All in all.... a good piece of kit.... have to say though...the dongle does run a little hot for my likings ...... but so far so good. Ariel wise..... depends largely on your location... if you can erect an outside ariel....DO SO !!.... unfortunately I am stuck with indoor ariels but with a little research on youtube I was able to construct a really good sensitive unit that does the job nicely.....spend some time researching ariels and how they work .... it will pay off and you will end up with a neat little dongle that turns into a powerfull and versitile srd radio.

購入してから日はたちましたが2024年7月になって設定を始めました。バンドルは認識しているのですがまったく受信できず機能せず。ドライバを何度も再インストールして設定し直しても機能せず。自分の設定が悪いのかと思いいろいろ調べてチャレンジしたのですが機能しません。何をどうしたら良いのかもう手は尽くしました。もうよくわかりません。

Premetto: restituito perché troppo impegnativo (necessario stare davanti al PC per usarlo....e ti rapisce...). Necessità di un'antenna OTTIMA, altrimenti non può essere apprezzato. Funziona benissimo ed ha un tumore di fondo bassissimo. Sì ricevono onde lunghe, corte, medie e tutta la banda scopre le FM....(antenna specifica per ogni range di frequenza, indispensabile). Funziona con diversi software, ma Airspy e' il più semplice e gestibile. La frequenza e' precisa al millesimo in ogni stazione. Se avessi tempo lo ricomprerei (ho optato per un portatile wifi che riceve in streaming tutte le web radio).

Die in den Kits mitgelieferten Stabantennen sind eher etwas für VHF / UHF, das ist ja klar. Dafür ist ja der Balun da. Ich hatte mir dieses Kit vor einigen Jahren gekauft und fand die Performance auf HF nicht so schön (Ich nutzte zu dieser Zeit den Balun mit einer Langdrahtantenne ca. 15m. ) Ich hatte mir dann aus dem Internet die YouLoop-Antenne "nachgebaut" und damit war einfach mal viel besserer Empfang von HF möglich. So habe ich mir dann nachträglich die "Originale" YouLoop von AirSpy dazu geholt. Damit empfange ich nicht nur ganz gut HF (und den Powerline-Störsender des Nachbarn gegenüber) sondern auch auf VHF erziehle ich ganz brauchbare Ergebnisse.

This applies to the NooElec NESDR SMArt HF Bundle. I think it's super, but there are some things to watch out for, or order to have a happy experience with this software defined radio. It ships without instructions so watch the YouTube videos on setup first. The USB device which plugs into the computer is very large and will block adjacent ports. It is large because it consumes a lot of power and is worked hard - and so gets hot. In order to use the Ham it Up device, then a USB (male/female) extension cable is needed, in addition to the USB cable for power to the Ham it Up device. There are YouTube videos on setup. Anyway the NooElec devices have worked well over weeks and have had no issues using good USB cables (which are not provided). Then there's the dreaded driver issue. When you plug the thing into the USB port of your computer it will recognize the unit right away as a DVB television tuner - which unfortunately is wrong and a case of mistaken identity. Nooelec did provide exact instructions on blacklisting TV drivers for the dvb-128xxu device as well as installing and testing the proper drivers for the device. They also emailed me with a direct link within a few days after I received the device(s). I use Linux, but all distros should have a copy of rtl-sdr in their repositories which will get the correct drivers working. Since that part took minutes, I was shocked at how difficult it was to get programs working since most are packaged only for Ubuntu and Debian Linux. The solution was to download an ISO of Skywave Linux and use that to make a live DVD/USB. You simply put that into your DVD drive or USB and set the computer to start from DVD or USB first. Then your computer loads the Skywave operating system (based on Ubuntu). All driver issues are settled and HAM programs work. I was amazed at how well everything worked for a new distribution! It was a matter of plugging in the NooElec devices, having them properly detected and working and checking out the programs. When you are done playing, just remove the DVD or USB stick and reboot back in to your regular system. DO NOT install to computer unless you have an old computer to set up for radio! There are YouTube videos explaining everything step by step. Overall, I'm very happy with the NooElec bundle and I'm learning lots by using it!