[NLRS] FunCube

[Doug Reed]

There are probably hundreds of different SDR hardware products on the
market with different levels of capability. It all comes back to deep
pockets and how much you want to spend. If you want champagne on a
Kool-Aid budget, you will have a long wait until someone has another
serendipitous accident like finding the DVB-T dongle can be used for
SDR.

If money is no object then you can start with the SDR-IQ or jump to
the USRP if you want real wide-range RX-TX frequency coverage in your
SDR. If you start getting into professional hardware you can also look
at products like the blade-RF <http://www.nuand.com/>, 28MHz BW RX-TX
from 300MHz to 3.8GHz.

But until you know what you want to do, the DVB-T dongle is probably
the cheapest way to find out a bit of what you can do with SDR. If you
have lots of money to spend, then the USRP gives you lots of options.
But keep in mind that the USRP is over 5 years old and there are
probably other options available now. Even TAPR has a SDR project, the
open-source HPSDR project. <http://www.tapr.org/hpsdr_index.html>

73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.