I’m excited to receive my uConsole this month. I’m planning on getting the upcoming RTL-SDR+Lora+GPS+internal USB-C module to use all the receive functions. At the same time, I’m hoping to add an ATSC 3.0 USB TV Tuner to allow for digital TV reception as well. In particular, I’m looking at this device: Amazon.com: GT MEDIA ATSC3.0/1.0 OTA Signal Meter, ATSC3.0/1.0 USB3.0 TV Tuner Stick Digital Terrestrial Signal Tuner for TV, Phone, Tablet, Pad, Car Computer Supports 4K OTA Channel Broadcast, TF DVR Recording : Electronics. Would anyone have input if I can tear down this device and use the board only to place it internally in the uConsole? Any comments would be helpful!
Seems like a poor choice for the uConsole. That product page indicates, both in description and reviews, that the software only works on Android devices. (It also sounds like the software is quite poor, and the device doesn’t support modern DRM so wouldn’t work with all signals anyway even if used on a phone or Android TV as intended.) At least one review mentioned that the software didn’t work on their PC using an Android emulator, and I’d guess the chances of it working under waydroid are slim to none. There are claims iOS might be supported in future, but no indication that it will ever support Linux/Windows/Mac/etc.
So in addition to trying to get the hardware to fit inside the device, it sounds like you’ll need to reverse engineer the software and create your own which would work on the uConsole. Or you could attempt to port a version of Android OS to the uConsole which would likely be a major project (if it’s possible at all) and probably never support all the hardware anyway.
I was pretty sure I’d find the same thing on Aliexpress for a cheaper price, but this is one of those rare cases where Amazon is actually cheaper (by a few dollars) for the same item. There’s more info on the Aliexpress listing which confirms what was on the Amazon listing, but it’s always good to be skeptical of details on these sorts of products since they often just make up specs or get them wrong, and the product images may not match the product very well either.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806050290143.html
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The whole RTL-SDR thing started when someone took a tv reception usb dongle and tried to use it for general radio reception. The chips in sdr dongles are still that same chip as far as I understand.
If you plan on getting the sdr expansion module, that one will also have that same chip. You only need to find the right software.
I guess that only applies to broadcast tv.
Edit: I may have been mistaken about rtlsdr dongles being able to decode that, if someone knows the limitations there please reply here, it’s interesting.
@adcockm yes you’re right about this USB dongle. Based on the reviews and documentation, it doesn’t seem worth it to explore. Instead of ATSC 3.0 reception, how about ATSC 1.0? It looks like the one here: Amazon.com: Hauppauge 1191 WinTV-HVR-955Q USB TV Tuner For Notebook : Electronics . This one seems to run already well on Linux and works with VLC and Kaffeine. The site here explicitly says it can work on rPi Linux: Hauppauge Support | Linux.
@LB3IJ I think the current RTL-SDR chips can be tuned for analog OTA TV signals, but not for digital TV. In US/Canada, ATSC 1.0 & 3.0 are the standards and seem to require specific chips to decode them (correct me if I’m wrong), while EU uses the DVB-T2 standard. In the case of the Hauppauge, it uses the Auvitek AU8522AA ref here: Adding Heatsinks to a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q | John-AM.com