Reddit mentions of The Hobbyist's Guide to the RTL-SDR: Really Cheap Software Defined Radio

Edit: I'm here from the main page as well. Googling around I found this book "The Hobbyist's Guide to the RTL-SDR: Really Cheap Software Defined Radio" on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KCDF1QI/

You can read it for free with a 30-day free trial of Amazon books.

It goes through everything from setup to advanced usage so I'm gonna give it a shot. Hopes it helps other people get started!

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ is a great place to start. They also have a book that will cover much of the basics from the different radio's you can get, antennas, filters and a walk through of large amount of projects. If you want to go a bit deeper you should check out the book Field Expedient SDR: Introduction to Software Defined Radio. There are three books to that series.

As for your first SDR Nooelec NESDR Smartee bundle is a great start. Once you have an idea of what other projects you want to work on you can upgrade to something like LimeSDR (or mini) or a hackrf. I would recommend the LimeSDR Mini.

This book covers pretty much everything you're after https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hobbyists-Guide-RTL-SDR-Software-Defined-ebook/dp/B00KCDF1QI


free PDFs are also available online https://www.surviveuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-Hobbyists-Guide-To-RTL-SDR-Carl-Laufer.pdf

The one sold by rtl-sdr.com. I bought my dongle/antenna from them as well.

I was in your position, so I can tell you there's not a lot out there that walks a software person through radio and even less that walks a software person through ham radio. I'll share some key things that helped me:

1. The RTL-SDR book is pretty good. They don't explain a lot, but the projects are OK and give you a direction to work in and show what's possible.
   
   
2. You can get an amateur radio book, but be prepared to have to make some connections yourself. Like, they talk a lot about modes. Amateur radio "modes" are basically what you and I would call protocols: An agreement to transmit and receive using certain conventions. The ham radio sources are almost 100% directed at explaining new ham things to people who are already in the hobby, not explaining things to outsiders--it's really frustrating.
   
   
3. You can understand a lot with some pretty simple mental models. Radio stations (large and small), sometimes they transmit analog sometimes digital, etc. However, if you want to understand settings like "FFT size" or "LNA" and why you can only see a certain amount of bandwidth or if you want to build your own application from scratch, you need to dig into the mathematics of digital signal processing (DSP). My favorite free resources for that are:
   
   a. GreatScottGadgets shortish overview of some basic concepts from an SDR perspective
   
   b. A really neat website that introduces many fundamental DSP concepts
   
   c. A free book that explains DSP in detail step by step
   
   

Yeah, I updated my post with a an online streaming service. If you're already familiar with radio and just need to bridge the software gap, I recommend this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Hobbyists-Guide-RTL-SDR-Software-Defined-ebook/dp/B00KCDF1QI

Also, one thing I have prepped on is bringing back cellular service. If you have an OpenBTS tranciever station backed to a working PBX, you can restore cell service for a small area (1/4 mile) using minimal equipment.

Cell towers won't last beyond 2-3 hours without power. I know from experience: I was in the 2011 Southwest Blackout. The backup power failed on most of the towers within 3 hours. It was a complete grid-down situation for 13 hours for my area. Nothing worked (not even the water or gas)... except my old dial up modem which had backup power ;). My local grocery store got fully cleaned and looted within the first 4 hours. Traffic completely ground to a halt. I mean a complete halt. We didn't move even 2 ft for an hour, and we chose to abandon our car like everyone else and walk a couple miles back to my house (which we just left from). There were other problems too:

>The outage caused significant losses to restaurants and grocery stores, which were forced to discard quantities of spoiled food; perishable food losses at grocery stores, eating establishments and households were estimated at $12 million to $18 million.[14] The outage also caused some sewage pumping stations to fail, resulting in contaminated beaches and potentially unsafe water supplies in several areas.[15] As a precaution, in some neighborhoods, residents were told to boil their water or use bottled water for several days after the outage.[16] Due to the failure at the sewage pumping stations, diesel generators have been installed at five pumping stations.[17]

>The hardest hit region of the blackout, the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area, was essentially brought to a standstill. Surface streets became gridlocked due to the loss of traffic signals, and the San Diego skyline went dark. The San Diego Trolley system was shut down as there was no power to operate signal lights and related functions. Citizens in Tijuana and in inland areas like the Coachella Valley stayed outdoors late into the night to escape the heat.[6] Freeways in the Southern California megalopolis experienced extreme clogging, especially on the I-15 and I-5 corridors between southeastern Greater Los Angeles and the San Diego area's North County.[6]

I know a lot of people back east are like "meh, 13 hours, try 3 days." But it is completely different dealing with a blizzard where everyone is locked indoors, and a heat wave without power. Things fall apart a lot quickly when there is not extreme weather preventing people from going outside. It was like a lightswitch: Now there's infrastructure, now there isn't. I was in a blizzard about a decade ago in the PNW where the power went out for a couple days, and it was no big deal. I'd much rather be in that situation than deal with normal clear weather where the power grid, cell systems, water systems, gas systems and core networks just disappear from the map for a day. It gave a real clear view of what would happen if shit really hit the fan in a metro area. Pretty much all infrastructure will die off within a day or two, including water. Thankfully POTS is always really reliable in extended outages, and if you can find a working phone line anywhere you can jump back online and into an IRC channel or other low-bandwidth message system to get information flowing again. Land lines will usually last well over a week without power, they're usually the absolute last communication network to go down, they can be vital for getting information in and out of an area that's in crisis.

I found this book really useful. It's mostly projects from the website and you have to translate some of the instructions from "I did this one time" to "how do I do this now". But it's a great intro into a lot of different project ideas.

I got the airplane tracking thing going and also read my power meter broadcasts (and my neighbors). Found a bunch of medical pagers and police/EMS freqs. Also a bunch of weird things, including a neighbor who apparently watches TV while wearing RF wireless headphones.

I had a very difficult time capturing any frequencies I found listed online. In particular, I didn't find even one Ham thing of any kind. I know the HF freqs are out of reach, but the repeaters etc should be there. Radio silence.

No need for a parabolic or a horn antenna. You can try a home-built Yagi, or an introductory book to the RTL SDR suggests a QFH antenna. There are other options that will work. A QFH is your best bet since it will be RHCP. I suggest purchasing this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Hobbyists-Guide-RTL-SDR-Software-Defined-ebook/dp/B00KCDF1QI

it is absolutely excellent and it includes a tutorial on how to receive from GOES. But if you just google how to build a QFH tuned to the proper frequencies, you should be fine.