[HBQRP] Funcube dongle details, take 2

[Sean Pepin]

Greetings,

Sorry this bounced the first time, I had some embedded links and the 
system doesn't seem to like that very much.

This is just a few more notes that might save some folks the footwork if 
they're interested in the Funcube Dongle.

Price
Current price is 99GBP with 13.16GBP shipping (wow) for a total of 112.16GBP
(We don't pay EU VAT on purchases shipped to a US address)
The Pound Sterling has gone back to late eighties levels for the last 
year or so, and is about 1.6USD
At the moment the precise cost works out to $177.3137, and that 
shouldn't change by more than $10 or so unless something drastic happens.
Also important, they only accept Paypal, so this assumes Paypal uses the 
most recent exchange rate and charges no fees.

Availability
When I first saw this little fella in my web stumblings it was out of 
stock, and how! The first batch sold out in less than two minutes, and 
this has happened more than once. It seems they've sorted this out now, 
and they've got fresh stock as of about a week ago. If it winds up 
depleted, rest assured they'll work on making more. Some of the money 
for this goes to AMSAT-UK's Funcube satellite project and they've raised 
over 20KUSD so far, so they've got lots of motivation to keep up with 
demand.

What's it do?
It's an SDR receiver with about an 80kHz bandwidth that looks like a USB 
wifi adapter with an SMA connector on the end. It appears to the 
computer to be a sound card with two channels hooked up to an I-Q pair, 
so it's usable with essentially any SDR software out there. The way they 
describe the drivers (built in for all OSes) I'm thinking they used a 
super common audio chipset that any OS out there will handle with ease. 
While listed to work from 64 to 1700MHz there are some folks who manage 
to push their unit down to about 51.5MHz and up over 2GHz.
It's designed for educational outreach for satellite telemetry reception.
Most of this is from the tech details page on their website.

Will it work for Dar's 900MHz project?
In my horribly inexpert opinion, definitely. It should be as simple as 
adding an antenna and making a stereo recording. My only worry is the 
900MHz band's part 15 devices (garage door openers, baby monitors, other 
things that generally spew RF), but this is a receiver that's purpose 
built for satellite telemetry and a directional antenna should help a lot.

I'm not up on all this SDR stuff, what can I do with it aside from Dar's 
project?
Think of it as an (almost) all mode general coverage receiver that works 
from 64 to 1700MHz. The 80kHz bandwidth can be shifted up and down it's 
full range, and with the computer software you can listen to or decode 
anything that fits into 80kHz, which I think covers all amateur modes 
except fast scan TV (someone correct me if I've forgotten something). 
Getting it working on HF makes for an interesting and relatively simple 
homebrew project. There's at least one youtube video of someone having 
built a simple upconverter, which is essentially a mixer and a fixed 
local oscillator. Maybe those 50MHz xtals will come in handy after all!