SDRplay Community Forum

Dear SDRplay forum,

I bought the SDRplay box a week or two ago so I'm still learning and
would be happy for some advice :

I'm running Windows 7 64bit, installed the usb-driver (MiricsSDRAPIInstaller_1.8.1.exe)
and installed HDSDR (2.70) with the plugin (SDRplay_EXTIO_Installer_v3.6.exe).

I've tried connecting the sdr to the following two :

and a standard USB cable to the PC.

I start up HDSDR , default settings for the plugin and hit start.
I -am- definitely picking up a few things (AM radio ~ 5-6 MHz, RF remote activity @ 433 MHz), and I seem to be
able to at least see the local FM stations in the waterfall.

Signal strength in any case never really seems to go above -100dB

Although you can hear music and talking, the stations are very noisy.

I've tried testing outdoors with no change. A normal radio works fine.

I've tried experimenting with the settings for the plugin, but no combination of settings seem to do anything.



best regards
Anders

Dear Anders,
it is hard to see the detail on your screen grab, but your IF gain slider appears to be at minimum gain. I suggest that you try the following setting as a starting point:
AGC off
IF gain reduction: 50 dB
LNA On
Zero IF mode
IF bandwidth: 1.536 MHz

If this doesn't help, please email: support@sdrplay.com with your RSP serial number and your ExtIO settings and we will try to get you going.

Sincerely

SDRplay Tech_Support

There's a happy ending to this story - Anders contacted support on support@sdrplay.com and we pointed out the following....

"Your spectrum with 50dB of gain reduction looks fine. The problem is that your demodulation bandwidth is too low for demodulating wideband FM. You only have 12 KHz, which is suitable only for narrowband FM or AM.> Please select Bandwidth and pick 192000 "

Anders did this and reported back.. "Perfect(!) .... Thank you very much. Feel free to add a response to the forum thread with the "solution" just in case it might help others " and that's what we've done

Whatever your first time experiences, the support team is here to help you. We are on (long) UK hours so for even faster help and ideas, consider joining the closed FaceBook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/sdrplay/ - they have 1700 people round the world ready to help with just about anything! (If not already on FaceBook, you can join FaceBook giving mimimal personal information, purely for that purpose! The SDRplay group is a 'closed' group to keep out spammers and trolls, but it's a very friendly group run by some amazing folks)

73 Jon G4ABQ/ SDRplay marketing