Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5: 12 weekend projects for one USB radio stick.

The Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5 is a receive-only RTL-SDR dongle (Realtek RTL2832U chip, R820T2 tuner) that tunes from 100 kHz to 1.75 GHz and plugs into a USB port on Windows, Mac, Linux or a Raspberry Pi. With free software and the aerials in the bundle, a weekend is enough to track the planes overhead on your own live map, see the ships in the harbour, read the temperature from weather stations up the street, decode a weather balloon as it climbs, download a weather-satellite photo and pick up shortwave stations from overseas. Every project below lists the frequency, the aerial length, the software and how long it takes.

If you’re new to SDR, read What is a software-defined radio? first. It covers installing the driver and software on Windows, Mac and Linux, setting the gain and why aerial length matters. This article assumes you’ve got a waterfall on the screen and want something to do with it.

Where it stands (13/10/2026). Done on our bench: FM radio on a Mac and on a Linux laptop, sharing the dongle over the network, and free-to-air TV. Everything else on this page is our list for the coming weekends. Each project tells you exactly what to do, and we’ll add our own results and screenshots here as we tick them off.

The dongle

Pick your weekend

Start at the top. The first five need nothing but the bundle; the later ones add a length of wire, a Raspberry Pi or patience.

Aerial lengths below use the rule from the Learn page: a single whip on a metal base should be a quarter wavelength, 7,500 ÷ frequency in MHz, in centimetres. Stand the magnetic base on a baking tray or the top of the fridge, not on wood.

Before Saturday: ten minutes of setup

1. Install SDR++ and the driver for your computer, using the Windows, Mac or Linux section of the Learn page. Mac users: no driver needed. Linux users: the TV driver may need unhooking.
2. Plug the dongle in on a USB extension lead, not straight into the computer. Computers are noisy, and 50 cm of cable makes a visible difference.
3. Check it works. Tune to a local FM station; if you hear it, you’re ready.
4. One program at a time. Only one program can open the dongle. Close SDR++ before starting any of the specialist decoders below.

Several projects use command-line programs. They are less scary than they look: you paste one line and watch the results scroll past.

Project 1: FM with station names (the warm-up)

Frequency: 87.5–108 MHz · Aerial: telescopic whip, fully out · Software: SDR++ · Time: 15 minutes

Tune SDR++ to around 98 MHz, set the mode to WFM, and click a bright stripe on the waterfall. Turn on the RDS decoder and the station name appears, just as on a car radio. We had triple j on 105.7 MHz on a Mac and three Sydney stations in stereo on a Linux laptop on our first evening.

Done when: you can see a station’s name on screen. Level up: DAB+ digital radio around 200 MHz, with the free welle.io program (how, on the Learn page).

Project 2: The sensors on your street

Frequency: 433.92 MHz · Aerial: the bundle’s 433 MHz whip (or the telescopic at 17 cm) · Software: rtl_433 · Time: 30 minutes

Wireless weather stations, pool thermometers, doorbells and the tyre-pressure sensors in passing cars all chirp short bursts on 433.92 MHz, under the ACMA’s low-interference-potential devices class licence. The free program rtl_433 (github.com/merbanan/rtl_433) recognises about 380 kinds of them and prints what they say.

1. Install it: brew install rtl_433 on a Mac, sudo apt install rtl-433 on Debian, Ubuntu or Mint, or a ready-made zip from the releases page on Windows.
2. Run rtl_433 and leave it for ten minutes.
3. Watch lines like model: … temperature_C: 18.2 humidity: 64 arrive.

Done when: you’ve found your own weather station, and probably three of the neighbours’. Level up: send the readings to Home Assistant, so your own sensor becomes a dashboard tile and a temperature graph: rtl_433 can publish to an MQTT broker (-F mqtt://…), and the rtl_433_mqtt_hass.py script in its repository makes each sensor appear in Home Assistant automatically (rtl_433). Treat other people’s sensors as background scenery: read your own, ignore theirs.

Project 3: Your own flight radar

Frequency: 1090 MHz · Aerial: a quarter wave is 6.9 cm. Try the bundle’s short UHF whip first, then a home-made one · Software: readsb + tar1090, or a ready-made Raspberry Pi image · Time: 1 hour

Almost every aircraft over Australia broadcasts its position, height, speed and call sign on 1090 MHz (ADS-B), and CASA has made it the standard here. Your dongle can hear them for tens of kilometres from a window, and more from the roof. This is the project most people fall in love with.

1. Easiest route: flash the free adsb.im image onto a Raspberry Pi’s microSD card and finish the setup in a web browser. On a Linux laptop or a Pi you already run, a one-line script installs the readsb decoder and the tar1090 map (wiedehopf). Windows is the awkward one: there are Windows builds of the decoder, but no ready-made download we’d point a beginner at, so use a Pi.
2. Open the map in a browser. Planes appear as they come in range, with a trail behind each one.
3. The 6.9 cm aerial: strip 6.9 cm of the inner core of a piece of coax, or solder a 6.9 cm wire to the centre pin of an SMA connector, and stand it upright on the magnetic base’s baking tray. Higher and outside beats everything else.

Done when: you see a plane on your map, walk outside and see the same plane in the sky. Level up: feed your data to a flight-tracking network. FlightAware, for one, gives feeders a free Enterprise account (FlightAware), and the adsb.im image can feed it and several other networks with a tick box.

Project 4: Listen to the control tower

Frequency: 118–137 MHz · Aerial: the telescopic whip fully out. At about 62 cm it’s almost exactly a quarter wave for 121 MHz, the middle of the band · Software: SDR++ · Time: 30 minutes

Aircraft and air traffic control talk on AM, not FM, in the VHF airband. In Sydney, start with the recorded airport information (ATIS) on 118.55 MHz: it repeats around the clock, so you can tune it in without waiting (Airservices ERSA, effective 03/09/2026). Then try the tower and approach frequencies in our Australian radio frequency guide.

1. Set SDR++ to AM with a bandwidth of about 8 kHz.
2. Turn the squelch up until the hiss stops, so only transmissions open it.
3. Line it up with project 3, and you can hear the pilot whose plane you’re watching on the map.

Done when: you hear “Sydney Tower” and a call sign you can find on your map. Listening is generally not an offence in Australia (Australian Emergency Law, 30/12/2024), but never transmit on these frequencies, and don’t pass on what you hear.

Project 5: Ships in the harbour

Frequency: 161.975 and 162.025 MHz (AIS) · Aerial: telescopic whip at 46 cm · Software: AIS-catcher · Time: 1 hour

Ships broadcast their name, position, course and destination on two marine VHF channels, the Automatic Identification System. From anywhere with a line of sight to the water (Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay, Port Phillip, the Brisbane River), the dongle turns into a live ship map.

1. Download AIS-catcher (docs), free for Windows, Mac, Linux and the Raspberry Pi. It decodes both channels at once with one dongle.
2. Start it with its web viewer turned on and open the map in your browser.
3. Watch ferries, tugs and container ships appear with their names.

Done when: you can name the ferry going past. Level up: share your feed: AIS-catcher can send it to its own community map, aiscatcher.org, and to aprs.fi. Inland? Skip this one, or try it on a day at the beach with a laptop.

Project 6: An overnight scan of your suburb

Frequency: whatever you choose, up to about 1.7 GHz · Aerial: the telescopic whip · Software: rtl_power and a heatmap script · Time: five minutes to set up, a night to run

Before bed, tell the dongle to sweep a wide stretch of spectrum and log the signal strength. In the morning, turn the log into a heatmap: a picture of everything that transmitted near you overnight, from the taxi base to the garbage truck’s telemetry at 5 a.m.

1. Run something like rtl_power -f 400M:470M:10k -g 30 -i 10 -e 8h survey.csv (400–470 MHz in 10 kHz steps, every 10 seconds, for 8 hours).
2. Turn the CSV into an image with heatmap.py (keenerd), which needs Python 3 and the Pillow library: python heatmap.py survey.csv survey.png.
3. Every horizontal stripe is a transmitter. Every short dash is a burst.

Done when: you’ve found a signal you can’t explain, and then explained it using the frequency guide.

Project 7: Chase a weather balloon

Frequency: 400–406 MHz · Aerial: telescopic whip at about 18.6 cm, or the 433 MHz whip in a pinch · Software: radiosonde_auto_rx, or SDR++ to just see it · Time: a morning

The Bureau of Meteorology releases weather balloons from about 38 sites around Australia, many of them now from automatic launchers (Vaisala, BoM). Each carries a small instrument, a radiosonde, that radios back temperature, humidity and its GPS position as it climbs to 30 km or so, then bursts and falls by parachute.

1. Find your nearest launch site, its frequency and its launch times on SondeHub (sondehub.org), which tracks sondes worldwide. Sites and times have been changing as the Bureau automates, so check there rather than trusting an old guide.
2. Run radiosonde_auto_rx (Project Horus) on a Raspberry Pi or Linux laptop. It scans the band, finds the sonde and decodes its position.
3. Watch it climb on the map in real time, and see where it lands.

Done when: you’ve decoded a balloon’s position and height. Level up: upload your reception to SondeHub so other people can chase it too, or go and find where it landed. If you do: sondes are harmless, but don’t go onto private property, roads or anywhere near power lines; follow any instructions printed on it; and it has a lithium battery inside, so it goes in e-waste, not the bin.

Project 8: A photo of Australia from a weather satellite

Frequency: 137 MHz (Meteor-M LRPT) · Aerial: a V-dipole with two arms of about 53 cm at 120°, flat and horizontal (RTL-SDR Blog) · Software: SatDump · Time: an afternoon, and a 10-minute pass

Russia’s Meteor-M weather satellites send down digital pictures as they pass overhead, several times a day. With a home-made aerial you can catch a pass and turn it into a photo of the clouds over Australia taken minutes earlier. (The older American NOAA satellites that many guides still describe were switched off in 2025.)

1. Build the aerial: two lengths of stiff wire (wire coat hangers work) about 53 cm each, joined to a piece of coax with a terminal block, spread at 120°, lying flat and pointing roughly north–south. Mount it outside with a clear view of the sky.
2. Find a pass of Meteor-M N2-4, the one to start with, using a pass-prediction app or website for your suburb. Its pictures come down at around 137.9 or 137.1 MHz.
3. Record and decode: in SatDump (SatDump, free for Windows, Mac, Linux and the Pi), start a live recording a minute before the satellite rises; it decodes as it goes.

Done when: you’ve got a cloud picture with a coastline you recognise.

Project 9: Pictures from the International Space Station

Frequency: 437.550 MHz during ISS SSTV events · Aerial: the UHF whip, or the V-dipole · Software: SDR++ plus an SSTV decoder · Time: during a scheduled event

A few times a year, astronauts’ amateur radio on the ISS sends slow-scan TV images, each a picture that takes about 36 seconds to arrive, followed by two minutes’ break. Since April 2026 these events use 437.550 MHz (Robot36 mode), not the 145.800 MHz older guides give (ARISS, checked 12/10/2026).

1. Check ARISS for the next event, and a pass prediction for your suburb.
2. Tune SDR++ to 437.550 MHz in NFM, and route its audio into an SSTV decoder program.
3. Allow for Doppler: the frequency drifts by up to about ±10 kHz across a pass, so retune as it goes, or use a wide filter.

Done when: you’ve got a picture that came from space. Between events, the ISS’s cross-band repeater downlink (437.800 MHz) and APRS packets (437.825 MHz) are worth a listen on any good pass.

Project 10: Ham radio and APRS

Frequency: 2 m amateur band, 144–148 MHz · Aerial: telescopic whip at about 52 cm · Software: SDR++, and Direwolf for APRS · Time: an evening

Licensed radio amateurs talk through repeaters on hilltops, and their weekly news broadcasts are made for listeners. In Australia the national APRS frequency is 145.175 MHz: short data bursts carrying positions from cars, weather stations and hikers.

1. The news broadcast: in Sydney, VK2WI relays the national amateur radio news on Sunday mornings at 10:00, on 145.600 and 147.000 MHz (NFM) among others (ARNSW). Other cities have their own relays; our frequency guide lists the repeaters.
2. APRS: pipe the dongle into Direwolf, a free packet decoder whose documentation includes a receive-only RTL-SDR setup for a Raspberry Pi (Direwolf docs), and watch position reports decode. Then look the same call signs up on aprs.fi.

Done when: you’ve decoded a packet and found the sender on a map. Level up: get your own licence. Listening is how most hams started.

Project 11: Shortwave around the world

Frequency: 3–30 MHz · Aerial: 10 m or more of wire, along a fence or through the roof space, with a 9:1 balun · Software: SDR++ in direct-sampling mode · Time: an evening (shortwave is best at night)

Below 30 MHz, signals bounce off the ionosphere and come back down thousands of kilometres away, so on a good night you can hear broadcasters from Asia, aircraft over the Pacific and the Bureau of Meteorology’s own HF weather broadcasts. The SMArt v5 reaches down there by direct sampling, which bypasses the tuner (Nooelec).

1. Run a long wire outside or through the roof, joined to the dongle through a 9:1 balun. The telescopic whip is far too short: a quarter wave at 10 MHz is 7.5 m.
2. In SDR++, set the RTL-SDR source’s direct sampling to the Q branch, and tune with AM for broadcasters or USB/LSB for voices and data.
3. Try the evening broadcast bands around 6, 7, 9 and 11 MHz.

Done when: you’ve heard a station from another country. Honest note: direct sampling works, but it’s the weakest part of this dongle. If shortwave hooks you, an upconverter such as Nooelec’s Ham It Up shifts HF up into the range the tuner handles properly. Nooelec recommends it, with its Balun One Nine, for exactly this (Ham It Up, Balun One Nine).

Project 12: An always-on receiver you can use from your phone

Frequency: any · Hardware: a Raspberry Pi, the dongle, a power supply · Software: OpenWebRX+, which has a ready-made Raspberry Pi image (releases) · Time: an afternoon

Put the dongle on a Raspberry Pi near the window (or in the roof), and listen from any phone, tablet or computer in the house through a web browser. Several people can listen at once, to different stations inside the same slice of spectrum. It’s also the tidy way to run projects 3, 5 and 7 around the clock.

Already got a Linux machine running? rtl_tcp shares the dongle over your home network to SDR++ on another computer (how, on the Learn page); we did exactly that from a Linux laptop. Either way, keep it on your home network. Never open it to the internet.

Bonus for a long weekend: hear the Milky Way

Frequency: 1420.4 MHz (the hydrogen line) · Extra kit: a filtered low-noise amplifier and a horn or small dish aerial · Time: a long weekend

Cold hydrogen gas between the stars gives off a faint signal at 1420.4 MHz, and with a home-made horn (cardboard and aluminium foil is a classic) plus a filtered amplifier, an RTL-SDR can detect it as a small bump that moves with the galaxy’s rotation. The amplifier to use is a filtered one built for the job, such as Nooelec’s SAWbird+ H1 (Nooelec). The v5 has no bias tee, so power the SAWbird from its micro-USB port. The free Virgo software (Virgo) records the observation and plots the spectrum. It’s the most “I can’t believe this works” result an RTL-SDR can give you, and the best one to show the kids.

What it won’t do

• Transmit. It’s receive-only. It can’t jam anything or open anything.
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and drones at 2.4 GHz. Above its 1.75 GHz limit.
• Police radio. NSW Police’s radio is encrypted digital, so you’ll see a signal on the waterfall and hear nothing. That’s the system working as designed. Some fire and emergency channels, such as NSW RFS fireground radio, are still open; our frequency guide lists them. In an emergency, call 000: a scanner is for listening, not for calling for help.
• A whole TV channel in SDR mode. A 7 MHz channel is wider than the dongle can capture. Switched back to its TV driver, though, it’s a TV tuner again: watch free-to-air TV on your laptop.
• Pagers. Free software can decode some pager networks, but it isn’t something we’d do. Those messages are private communications, and paging runs over a carrier’s network, so the interception offence in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act is a real risk. A 2020 case in Western Australia, where a teenager’s public pager-decoding page leaked COVID-19 quarantine details, shows what can go wrong (RTL-SDR Blog).

The shopping list

Everything past project 5 is optional. Buy only what the next project needs.

Reading this in the US?

The dongle and the software are the same; a few frequencies change.

• FM: the same 88–108 MHz band, and US stations also sit on odd decimals.
• No DAB+, but HD Radio. US digital radio rides alongside the FM signal, and the free nrsc5 program decodes it with an RTL-SDR on Linux, Mac or Windows (nrsc5).
• Sensors: many US devices use 315 MHz or 915 MHz instead of 433.92 MHz. rtl_433 covers both; start it with -f 315M or -f 915M.
• Planes: 1090 MHz works the same. Below 18,000 feet, US aircraft may use 978 MHz (UAT) instead, which needs a second decoder, dump978 (FAA).
• Weather balloons: the National Weather Service launches radiosondes twice a day from about 100 sites, at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC, though staffing has cut launches at some sites since 2025 (NWS).
• A bonus project: NOAA Weather Radio, continuous spoken forecasts on seven channels from 162.400 to 162.550 MHz, in NFM (NWS).
• APRS is on 144.390 MHz in North America, not 145.175 (aprs.org).
• The law is different. US federal law has its own rules on what you may listen to and pass on, notably for cellular calls. Check before you go beyond broadcasts.

Listening and the law (Australia)

Listening to broadcasts is what they’re for, and receiving most other transmissions is generally permitted. Intercepting phone calls is not, under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (s 7), and recording, sharing or acting on private communications you happen to hear can raise other legal problems. Treat anything that isn’t a broadcast, a beacon or your own device as none of your business. The Learn page has the longer version. This is general information, not legal advice.

Common questions

Sources

We opened and checked every source below on the date given.

• NESDR SMArt v5 product page (direct sampling below 25 MHz; no bias tee listed). Nooelec. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Ham It Up upconverter, Balun One Nine and SAWbird+ H1 (power by bias tee or micro-USB). Nooelec. Ham It Up, Balun One Nine, SAWbird+ H1. Checked 13/10/2026.
• rtl_433 (MQTT output, rtl_433_mqtt_hass.py, device list). GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• adsb.im ADS-B image; readsb + tar1090 install script. adsb.im, wiedehopf. Checked 13/10/2026.
• ADS-B feeder benefits. FlightAware. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• AIS-catcher documentation (platforms, web viewer, sharing). link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• rtl_power heatmap.py (keenerd). GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Weather balloons. Bureau of Meteorology. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Bureau of Meteorology upper-air case study (RS41 sondes, automatic launchers). Vaisala. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• SondeHub launch sites. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• radiosonde_auto_rx. Project Horus. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Using the dipole antenna kit (V-dipole for 137 MHz satellites). RTL-SDR Blog. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• SatDump. GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Meteor-M N2-3 transmitter record. SatNOGS DB. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• VK2WI news broadcasts. Amateur Radio NSW. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Direwolf documentation (Raspberry Pi SDR iGate). GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• OpenWebRX+ releases (Raspberry Pi images). GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Virgo radio astronomy software. GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• Using a scanner to listen to DFES (WA) radio (Michael Eburn). Australian Emergency Law. link. 30/12/2024.
• Australian teenager exposes COVID-19 patient data via POCSAG pager network. RTL-SDR Blog. link. 2020.
• NESDR SMArt v5 product page and bundle contents. Nooelec. link and bundle. Checked 12/10/2026.
• Marine VHF channel plan incl. AIS 1 and 2 (161.975, 162.025 MHz). ACMA / Federal Register of Legislation, via DG research pack 02. Checked 12/10/2026.
• ARISS: current status of ISS stations and upcoming SSTV events. status, SSTV. Status 07/10/2026, checked 12/10/2026.
• WIA Band Plan (APRS 145.175 MHz). Wireless Institute of Australia, via DG research pack 03. Checked 12/10/2026.
• En Route Supplement Australia, Sydney (ATIS 118.55 MHz). Airservices Australia. Effective 03/09/2026.
• Radiocommunications (Low Interference Potential Devices) Class Licence 2025. link. Checked 12/10/2026.
• Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979, s 7. link. Checked 12/10/2026.
• HD Radio decoder nrsc5. GitHub. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• NOAA Weather Radio (seven frequencies, 162.400–162.550 MHz) and Upper-air Observations Program (00Z/12Z launches; 2025 service change notice). National Weather Service. NWR, upper air. Checked 13/10/2026.
• ADS-B equipment: 1090ES or UAT below FL180. FAA. link. Checked 13/10/2026.
• APRS frequencies by region (144.39 North America, 145.175 Australia). aprs.org. link. Checked 13/10/2026.

Photographs (all via Wikimedia Commons, used under the licence shown)

• Dsimic, “DVB-T USB dongle with RTL2832U and R820T (cropped)”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Konung yaropolk, “SDRpp FM subcarriers”, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (resized, converted to JPEG). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Hedwig Storch, “Wireless remote sensor 7046”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Bidgee, “Qantas (VH-QPH) Airbus A330-303 landing Sydney Airport (1)”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 au (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Benchill, “Maersk Tokyo Port Botany”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Ralf Krebs, “Radiosonde Vaisala RS41 im Maisfeld”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• MKjanek32, “Meteor-M2 LRPT 2015 06 20 10-26 125”, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Sasha1250, “ISS sstv”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized, converted to JPEG). file page, checked 14/10/2026
• Thom Schneider, “Milky Way Streaky Bay (Unsplash)”, Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (resized). file page, checked 14/10/2026