SDRPlay RSP1 vs Nooelec NESDRmart

[perseus68]

Hi
I have been feeding for ~3years now with a Nooelec NESDR smart dongle and a 6 element CoCo.
Since I just bought a new Raspberry Pi4, I installed the V0.6 image by SDRPlay which comes with Dump1090 already installed and I wanted to try my RSP1 vs the trusty Nooelec Dongle.

Setup:

Nooelec SDR smart + 6 ele CoCo + Orange Pi PC plus

RSP1 + Ground Plane + Raspi4

Both the the antennas on my balcony, just 1m separation.
The RSP was run at Gain=45 ( I guess its maximum) .
The Nooelec is normally run at +42dB but even running at 45dB does not change the numbers of messages (i.e. SNR does not increase)
Also note that the RSP1 was run with a simple GP antenna!

Judge yourself, with the RSP I was getting twice the messages and I could spot farther planes constantly. I cannot state how much farther but I would guess 15-20 nm at least

There are many RSP clones sold on Aliexpress at very cheap prices that could be a worthy upgrade to the simple USB dongle.

Merry Christmas to all of you
Mark

[wiedehopf]

Have you tried switching the antennas?
Otherwise this test isn't really significant as the ground plane antenna could just perform better.

Also most people go for an rtl-sdr SDR with an integrated filter / LNA which changes the comparison again.

[perseus68]

Hi wiedehopf

I tested the two antennas with the Nooelec long time ago. The CoCo was slightly better than the GP.
So, even with a slightly worse antenna, the RSP1 is a clear winner.

[wiedehopf]

Which dump1090 version are you running for the rtl-sdr compatible receiver?

[perseus68]

I run Dump1090-fa

[abcd567]

SDRlay-RPi-Image-V0.6-Guide.png

https://www.sdrplay.com/docs/SDRplay...mage_Guide.pdf

3.8 ADS-B (dump1090)
This version of dump1090 has been derived from Oliver Jowett’s mutability version. That in turn was derived from Malcolm Robb’s dump1090. More information on dump1090 and Oliver Jowett can be found on github…

https://github.com/mutability/dump1090

ADS-B on the Raspberry Pi can be used standalone. There is a DUMP1090 bookmark set in the Chromium browser on the Raspberry Pi that will connect to dump1090’s web server. This will enable you to view the aircraft details on a map. You can still setup Virtual Radar Server on a remote PC and receive the aircraft information from dump1090 on the Raspberry Pi – the information on how to do this is contained in the ADS-B user guide that is available from the EASYplay menu.