[TriEmbed] seeking antenna recommendations for SDR

Carl Nobile carl.nobile at gmail.com
Wed Dec 3 15:26:29 CST 2014


Jon,

Actually the coat hanger idea is not far off from what you may be able to
do.

The wave length which is what the antenna length is based off of. If you
take the inverse of the frequence you get, what is called, the full wave
length. Antennas are often 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 wave length. A piece of wire cut
to the right length and a coil between the transmitter/receiver and the
antenna is all that is really needed. The ones you buy just have the coil
and the "wire" in one case.

Here's a link to a calculator: http://www.wavelengthcalculator.com/

You should also be able to buy something somewhere look on Newark or Allied.

Carl



On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 4:11 PM, <jonjwolfe at anibit.com> wrote:

>
>
> I recently picked up some RTL2832-based receiver dongles for my site(
> https://anibit.com/product/wls03001 ) and I decided to claim one for
> myself.
>
> I'm a novice when it comes to analog RF stuff, same for SDR.
>
> The antenna that comes with the dongle leaves a bit to be desired.
>
> I know that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all for antennae,
> but it there has to be one a little better for general purpose SDR than
> these. I found that just touching the end of the antenna gave me a lot
> better reception, at least in the FM radio band. (I contemplated trying to
> build something out of coat hangers and aluminum foil, for old time's sake)
>
> The dongle has MCX-style connectors, which seems is not common for RF
> stuff, I should have picked up some adapters from Adafruit while I was at
> it, I will eventually.
>
> Does anyone have recommendations for where to get a better general purpose
> antenna for the casual user?
>
> --Jon
>
>
> PS, I'd also love to hear from anyone at next meeting who has done a lot
> of cool things with SDR, it's so open-ended, it's a little hard to grasp
> all the things one can do with it.
>
>
>
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> TriEmbed at triembed.org
> http://mail.triembed.org/mailman/listinfo/triembed_triembed.org
> TriEmbed web site: http://TriEmbed.org
>



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Carl J. Nobile (Software Engineer)
carl.nobile at gmail.com
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