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steve-m / librtlsdr

Software to turn the RTL2832U into an SDR
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Enhancement Request: Add tuner driver for MxL603/MxL608 #45

Open texasyojimbo opened 6 years ago

texasyojimbo commented 6 years ago

There has been a considerable discussion in the past couple of days about a device called the Tzumi MagicTV. This is an Atheros-chipset OpenWRT device connected to an RTL2832P, which seems to be used as a bridge/DAC for a MaxLinear MxL608 tuner and a Panasonic ATSC demodulator.

The device is sold at Wal-Mart stores for $13, and is intended to allow the user to view OTA broadcasts using a WiFi connection to the device, which functions as an access point by default. There also seems to be an Eardatek Tevemo device which is similar.

From tear-down inspection as well as poking around the file system, some uses have concluded that the device could be used as a software defined radio with some software modifications (for example replacing the default ATSC server software with rtl_tcp). However, librtlsdr does not currently support the MxL608 tuner, and right now rtl_tcp (when placed on the openWRT device) defaults to direct sampling mode.

There is a general sense in these discussion groups that MaxLinear's source code could be ported to work with librtlsdr, but someone would have to make that happen.

  1. RTL-SDR.com blog: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tzumi-magictv-wifi-tv-tuner-device-contains-an-rtl-sdr-openwrt-board-and-battery-for-only-13/

  2. Reddit RTLSDR group: https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/8mlbps/tzumi_magictv_is_an_openwrt_board_rtlsdr/

  3. Existing code: https://github.com/avlogic/AVL6862/tree/master/2.10.7/tuner/MxL608

  4. MxL608 data sheet: https://datasheet.lcsc.com/szlcsc/MXL608-AG-T_C141783.pdf

Hoernchen commented 6 years ago

The tuner is connected to a demod ic, which is connected to the TS input of the rtl2832p, so code is not going to fix the fact that the device is unusable without quite a bit of tricky soldering to reroute the tuner output to the rtl.