rtl-sdr turns your Realtek RTL2832 based DVB dongle into a SDR receiver

Discord support server:

Experimental R820T/R820T2 rtl-sdr tuner driver that tunes down to 13 MHz or lower.
(From my experiments up to 3.4 MHz on R820T2)

Realtek RTL2832U based hardware can be used as a cheap SDR (Software-defined radio).
This device allows transferring the raw I/Q samples to the your PC/laptop/etc via USB.

History:
2017-2018: Backporting features and bug fixes from upstream and newer forks.
2021: Fully migrated to the CMake build system.
2022-2023: More fixes, add's, and improvements.
2023-2026: Driver optimizations, direct sampling improvements, expanded tuner/hardware support, and Modern CMake integration.

Dependencies

Linux

Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config cmake git libusb-1.0-0-dev

Arch/Manjaro:
Note: package has added to the AUR, or you can use PKGBUILD.

pacman -S cmake libusb

Windows

Visual Studio or MinGW/msys/LLVM Clang MinGW etc...
libusb libusb/releases
pthread-win32 library
Latest CMake or Old CMake for 2003/XP
Recommended for use: Precompiled static libs (build kit)

macOS

brew install libusb pkg-config cmake

Clone repo

git clone https://github.com/Mr-Precise/rtl-sdr/

cd rtl-sdr

Build: linux/macOS

Configure:

run cmake and start compilation. cmake will accept some options, e.g.

• -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON, default is OFF
• -DDETACH_KERNEL_DRIVER=ON, default is OFF
• -DENABLE_ZEROCOPY=ON, default is OFF
• -DLINK_RTL_APPS_WITH_STATIC_LIB=ON, default is OFF
• -DINSTALL_STATIC_LIB=ON, default is ON

all cmake options are optional

• -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr default install prefix on ubuntu.

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON -DDETACH_KERNEL_DRIVER=ON

Build:

using make utility:

make -j$(($(nproc) + 1))

or build using cmake:

cmake --build . --config Release

Install

setup into prefix, usually will require sudo:

sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

or build & install using cmake:

cmake --build . --config Release --target install

or if you manually build the package from the directory:

make install DESTDIR=build_folder_name

Download Release binary builds

Latest releases builds - for Linux (amd64, i386, amrhf, arm64), macOS intel, Windows: (x86 32/64 + ARM64 MSVC and MinGW cross-builds), Android.

Download Development binary builds

GitHub Actions builds - for Linux amd64 and macOS.
Nightly releases builds - for Linux, macOS, Windows: MSVC and MinGW cross-builds.

Supported Software List

• Gqrx
• SDR++
• GNU Radio
• OpenWebRX
• SDRSharp
• CubicSDR
• HDSDR and other Winrad compatible programs using ExtIO_RTL
• etc

Setup for SDR only use - without DVB compatibility:

• a special USB vendor/product id got reserved at http://pid.codes/ : 0x1209/0x2832
• for such devices the linux kernel's DVB modules are not loaded automatically, thus can be used without blacklisting dvb_usb_rtl28xxu below /etc/modprobe.d/
• this allows to use a second RTL dongle for use with DVB in parallel
• the IDs can be programmed with 'rtl_eeprom -n' or 'rtl_eeprom -g realtek_sdr'

Restoring broken devices (Corrupted / Blank EEPROM):

If your dongle is broken or unrecognized due to corrupted EEPROM data or a bad VID:PID (e.g. 0000:0000, ffff:ffff, 0bda:2831), you can restore it via rtl_eeprom -B without opening the case or shorting pins:

# Detect dongles with broken or corrupted IDs:
rtl_eeprom -B

# Restore default Realtek configuration:
rtl_eeprom -B -g realtek

# Or recover a specific bad VID:PID:
rtl_eeprom -B 1234:5678 -g realtek

On Windows, if the device has an invalid VID/PID (such as 0000:0000), it appears as an "Unknown USB Device". Open Zadig ("Options -> List All Devices") and install the WinUSB driver for it before running rtl_eeprom -B.

Dev documentation:

Connect && use library on your project:

1. If using find_package (recommended):

find_package(rtlsdr REQUIRED)

target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE
    rtlsdr::rtlsdr         # Recommended: automatically selects shared or static
    # rtlsdr::rtlsdr_shared # Or link shared explicitly
    # rtlsdr::rtlsdr_static # Or link static explicitly
)

Classic/legacy CMake variables are also supported:

find_package(rtlsdr REQUIRED)
include_directories(${RTLSDR_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE ${RTLSDR_LIBRARIES})

2. If used as a git submodule:

add_subdirectory(rtl-sdr)

# Target names and include directories are fully identical to find_package:
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE
    rtlsdr::rtlsdr         # (or rtlsdr::rtlsdr_static / rtlsdr::rtlsdr_shared)
)

3. If using pkg-config (pkg_check_modules):

find_package(PkgConfig REQUIRED)
pkg_check_modules(RTLSDR REQUIRED librtlsdr)

target_include_directories(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE ${RTLSDR_INCLUDE_DIRS})
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE ${RTLSDR_LIBRARIES})

(old) Notes on the mutability tree (2014/09/29)

Based on developments by Oliver Jowett from mutability repo

See old README.old.md for details