Quick HOWTO on how to configure Ubuntu / Lubuntu (24.04 or later) to work with the RTL-SDL Blog $50  hardware kit (that includes a dipole antenna). 

The RTL2832U chip in the v3 dongle is designed for DVB-T (European digital TV standard) and not for the ATSC standard used in North America. While these dongles are excellent for general-purpose software-defined radio, they lack the necessary bandwidth to capture the 6 MHz ATSC channel width, as they are limited to approximately 2.4–2.8 MHz of bandwidth.


If you want to go more in depth and download / install some more software, I highly recommend the “Intercept” package which makes it relatively easy to switch between a LOT of cool things to receive:  https://github.com/smittix/intercept


The following commands were used to get the hardware up and running using only “repository” sources, no downloading software from github and compiling and installing anything yourself.   (If you are willing to go that route, look at Intercept linked above, as its install script makes things as painless as possible.)

Commands I used for the software setup on Ubuntu / Lubuntu in this video:

Install the basic software:

sudo apt install rtl-sdr
sudo apt install gqrx-sdr



gqrx  is a general purpose SDL radio spectrum viewer / decoder


To blacklist the default RTL Digital TV module so our software (rtl-sdr, gqrx, dump1090) can use it:


cd /etc/modprobe.d

create a file (name is not important, but using the module name is nice)
You can use any text editor (I used vi, but pico is easier to use)

sudo pico blacklist-dvb_usb_rtl28xxu.conf

inside the file you must have one line:

blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu


Alternatively, you can create the file and add the line all with a single long command line:

echo ‘blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu’ | sudo tee –append /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-dvb_usb_rtl28xxu.conf


Then reboot your computer to make the blacklist take effect.


I use the command
tail -f /var/log/syslog

to review the syslog messages when I plug in a new device.

You can use the gqrx program to listen to FM radio broadcasts and see a waterfall of what transmissions exist in you area. (For a demo, see the video above.)



To hear shortwave or AM stations, you need to use direct sampling.
In GQRX go to Files->IO Devices-> and set the command line from rtl=0 to
rtl=0,direct_samp=2

To watch airplanes fly around, you need the dump1090 package:

sudo snap install dump1090-carroarmeto0

To allow this snap to connect to the USB rtl-sdl dongle you need to:

sudo snap connect dump1090-carroarmato0:raw-usb

to start the process that reads the 1.09Ghz signals and exports the data, run this command:

dump1090-carroarmato0.dump1090

Let the above command run, open a new terminal window, and start up the webserver (which uses the data from the dump1090 program):

dump1090-carroarmato0.webserver 8881

Open a web browser and navigate to the webserver running on local port 8881:

http://127.0.0.1:8881