RTL SDR V4 - Now with Built-In HF Upconverter + More Features

foreign [Music] welcome back to another tech Minds video so this is probably the best-selling RTL SDR receiver the RTL SDR blog version 3 which is compatible with pretty much all the SDR applications however within the past week or so RTL SDR have announced the release of this little beauty the RTL SDR version 4. now instantly recognizable by the refreshed look with a black casing and a prominent white writing Hardware wise there is not really much to look at apart from the standard USB dongle style connector on one end and then an SMA connector on the other end which you connect your antenna to now what you might notice is a little hole next to the SMA connector now this is something new when you enable the bias T within your SDR application you'll notice a little red LED illuminate through the little hole now comparing the V3 to the V4 it appears they pretty much look the same in terms of size and available connectors but what about inside so the top board here is the V3 which we're all used to and below is the V4 where we can clearly see differences and similarities to the V3 we'll get more into the actual differences in a moment but it's nice to see there's still a thermal strip on the underside which helps dissipate some of that heat to the casing of this SDR so let's briefly talk about what's new in RTL SDR version 4. well first off we have an improved HF reception and after testing this it's spot on and I'll show you this in a moment the improved HF reception is partly due to the V4 using a built-in yes built-in up converter this improves sensitivity and provides adjustable gain and gets rid of using direct sampling now improved filtering is achieved by the new edition of the R8 to a d chip which has three separate RF inputs therefore by triplexing the SMA input into three bands HF VHF and UHF this provides a better isolation between each band in addition to the triplex in the V4 makes use of a feature of the r828d chip which allows the use of simple Notch filters which should help with common interference bands such as am broadcast FM and digital audio broadcast the onboard power supply has been improved which is significantly reduced onboard phase noise on strong signals now a bonus of having an improved on-board power supply brings less current usage which in turn generates less heat compared to that V3 and to top it all off these great new additions the price of the V4 has dropped lower than the V3 and this is all due to the lower prices of the on-board chips that are used however there are some disadvantages of the V4 over the V3 and one which is Major well kind of if you're unlucky the V4 requires the use of a dedicated driver but that's not really a big issue as it's just the case of replacing the rtlstr.dll file in your SDR application with the one provided on the RTL SDR GitHub page and with the inclusion of extra filters comes a small price to pay and that's a two to three DB reduction in sensitivity on some bands you can see the full picture and graphs of this on the RTL SDR blog about the V4 although when testing side by side with a V3 I did not see any reduction in Signal strengths that would really be that noticeable well at least for me and lastly the availability of the V4 the r2a2d chip which is used in the V4 is completely out of production meaning there will be a limit on the amount of units which can be made ever at the time of making this video it was about one year's worth of production left until the stockpile of chips run dry so if you get a V4 and count yourself lucky the RTO SDR blog have confirmed though that the V3 will still be for sale for the foreseeable future so the V4 will not replace the V3 permanently at this stage so let's get to some testing while concentrating on HF performance considering this V4 has its own built-in up converter movement that I've done that yeah all right here I'll see you I'll work one of your namesake vkvk 20th uh CM uh same surname as yourself a little bit that might help a little bit but um uh you're teaching at five nine it's just clicking it um [Music] well elsewhere Tokyo is 25 overnight then a slight reign of 32 on Thursday it's on the battle see heavy rainfall and 23 tonight a slight rain tomorrow in 31 degrees Bangkok sat 26 overnight then a slight van and 34 on Thursday West [Music] [Applause] [Music] Chester clouds snow clouds no top three temperature two three two point one five and what I tend to do is have a transform our one-to-one balance I think I've said this before and one-to-one balance which blocks any common mode to the end you get the antenna disconnected from the ground you know get it up from a loophole up there and then the Earth isn't quite so important and the noise isn't quite so important as you can see in here the V4 works pretty darn well on HF but now let's perform a comparison against the V3 I'm going to use the same antenna and switch between the V3 and the V4 using a physical antenna switch now I've tried to make the settings the same on both versions of SDR plus plus which you can see running on the screen right now now on the right we have the V3 and on the left we have the new V4 as I go through the bands doing an A and B comparison you can easily see that the V4 has a much cleaner reception on HF with not so much overloading an intermod as you can see on the V3 on the ride show me again so so please and if you if you don't you're into a properly balanced day to you because move up to the FM broadcast band same configuration as before but using a different antenna we can see the signal strengths are pretty much the same along with performance maybe the V4 is receiving a smidge lower in signal strength but the quality is still the same anyway guys I hope you enjoyed that brief overview of the RTL SDR blog version 4 SDR receiver now I think it's a great addition to anyone's SDR collection so if you want to get one get one now before they run out of stock until the next video take care and I'll see you in the next one oh I almost forgot to mention I will soon be running a giveaway where I'll be giving away three V4 sdrs along with the antenna kit as shown on the screen now and I'll be giving one kit for normal subscribers one kit for YouTube members and one kit for patrons so if you want to be in it with three chances to win become a member or a patron as well as a subscriber details to the giveaway will be announced real soon so don't forget to be subscribed thank you [Music]

Channel: Tech Minds

Views: 53,872

Keywords: rtl sdr, version 4, rtl sdr v4, rtl sdr blog, hf upconverter, built in hf, new rf filtering, tech minds, techminds, sdr, software defined radio, tutorial, testing, rtl sdr review

Id: xnNky4NhVGU

Length: 9min 32sec (572 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023