RE: Blog 5 – Software defined radio with the Red Pitaya STEMlab 125-14 PRO Gen 2

shabaz — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 22:16:44 GMT

I find all the SDR apps to be pretty low quality and badly documented : ( Pothos SDR doesn't have any documentation regarding what each block does (and not all are intuitive) plus the UI could be better. I never look forward to using any SDR as a result, but it's a necessary evil sometimes, especially when needed for reverse-engineering radio protocols. If you know the modulation (or are willing to spend time experimenting), then it's a lot easier to use something like CC1101 instead of an SDR device, but that of course isn't helpful if you're actually trying to review the SDR itself of course.

Regarding the down-conversion, I think the frequency divider would be very difficult to get success with, it's a lot easier with a mixer (and a frequency generator source of some kind to drive it). A DIY mixer would work really well (NE602 would have been awesome but it's very obsolete, but there are some other possibilities), but you'd still need the 400 MHz-ish signal generation (I can't think of an easy solution for that, other than an off-the-shelf generator or module [or could use a diy oscillator and live with the drift]).

RE: Blog 5 – Software defined radio with the Red Pitaya STEMlab 125-14 PRO Gen 2

DAB — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 20:01:24 GMT

Nice update.

I like your persistence.

RE: Blog 5 – Software defined radio with the Red Pitaya STEMlab 125-14 PRO Gen 2

Qbit — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 12:53:25 GMT

Great deep-dive into the SDR capabilities and limitations of the Red Pitaya! It's impressive to see how you systematically tracked down the format mismatch issues with rtl_433 and the CF32 stream handling.