RTL-SDR Blog V4, installation and programmes

If you don't know what this is about, and you are interested, you can start by reading this previous post.

Easy start

The simplest and most effective way to install the drivers and start testing the RTL-SDR Blog V4 receiver is to install SDRSharp, even if you choose to use any other program.

Download sdrsharp-x86.zip from the Airspy website and unzip it to the folder where you want to keep it. Choose any location except inside the "Program Files" directory.

Nothing is installed, the folder contains an executable to run the program.

Download and installation of new drivers

The first thing to do (assuming this is your first time installing an SDR RTL dongle) is to run install-rtlsdr.bat. If you were already using V3 with any other software, you can simply update the drivers to the new ones needed for V4.

This will start a command prompt that will download all the drivers needed for SDRSharp to work with RTL-SDR. Once complete, press any key to close the command prompt.

Connect dongle and antenna

Now you can plug in the SDR and its antenna, but don't open the SDRSharp program yet.

If you now look in device management you will see that the device appears but the computer doesn't recognise it because it still needs the latest V4 specific driver.

Run zadig.exe

The latest versions of SDR Sharp are supposed to install the latest necessary drivers, but just to be sure and to avoid errors, zadig.exe will confirm this.

Find and run zadig.exe, which will have appeared in the same folder. This program will install (or update if you are using a V3) the new drivers needed for V4.

At the top, select Bulk-In Interface (Interface 0)

Under options you check these four.

Finally, make sure that the USB ID shows "0BDA 2838 00" and click on"Install Driver".

Click only once. Even if it seems to have no effect, wait. It takes a few seconds for the installation to start.

After a few minutes (depending on your machine) it will be installed.

Now, in the device manager you will see that instead of two "Bulk-In, Interface" only one will appear, indicating that the new driver has been installed.

Depending on the equipment, you may not find it there and it may appear under the name "Blog V4" in Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices, as long as the dongle is connected to the computer.

Open software and play

You can now open the program by running SDRSharp.exe

In the hamburger menu of SDR Sharp, under Source choose RTL-SDR USB (this is usually the same for all programs)

Then you just need to press Play to start receiving signals, after which you can adjust the gain and set the program to your liking.

Here you have a little bit of listening on 40 meters, 10 meters CB and other bands with the first tests of the MLA 30 loop antenna (to which I will dedicate a review in a future post).

Although it was not a very good propagation day and my conditions, location and antenna height are not the best, I was quite surprised to hear some stations on 11 meters (27.555 USB is still a chicken coop) and even some on CB.

Choosing software for RTL-SDR

Here the choice is a personal matter. There are quite a few programs compatible with this SDR. Some are more complete, but some are also more cumbersome. Almost all of them are very similar in their usage. Here is a list of the ones you can try.

I have compared for a while SDR# (SDRSharp) (originally created by Airspy only for their devices with SDR (multiplatform and open source software ). Maybe they are the two most used to start with, and I'm going to try to explain why I'm going with SDR.

In both programs, to move through the frequencies you can move up and down with the mouse by clicking on the top and bottom of any number or with the right and left cursor keys. You can also scroll to any point by clicking in the spectrum analyser.

On the left SDR# (SDRSharp), on the right SDR .

Both programs share many similarities in their tools and options and have good documentation and user guides as well as numerous reviews on Youtube, forums and blogs. In both you can tag frequencies to have a quick access list, record, play with the filters, adjust the bandwidth with the mouse, etc.

I leave both guides here. Although they are several years old, they haven't changed structurally in terms of usage.

Manual de SDR# y SDRSharp

Here is the SDR# (SDRSharp) one.

And the SDR one translated from English to Spanish thanks to DeepL. The translation is acceptable except for some single words like "Ham" translated with "jamón", when the correct is ham radio= ham radio amateur.

SDRSharp stands out for its more polished and graphically nicer interface and because it has a few interesting plugins (although they are scattered and many of them have not been updated for a long time), however SDR behaved much better. Here are the conclusions from my experience of using it:

Previous related article: RTL-SDR Blog V4, listening again

Next post: MLA 30 antenna loop review.

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