Controversial SDR: Plus 3-D Printing Stuff

It has been a while since an article has posted here, so this should be a good one involving a controversial SDR plus some 3D printing tips related to designing a simple enclosure for it.

Quick Summary:  Saving you a 20 minute video

Why is everything about price? For usually under $30, this SDR can be purchased on a few websites like Aliexpress and I am NOT encouraging you to buy this. Why?  It has infringed on the intellectual property of SDRplay in some regards. The driver used to get this and other similar MSI2500 chip based devices to work not made by SDRplay is needed. 

Only until recent versions of the driver, cloned versions of the RSP1 could use the driver to work with software easily like SDRangel, but that stopped after SDRplay API version 3.7.  I am glad that SDRplay built in some functions to only allow genuine SDRplay products to work with some of its software.  

However, since reference designs have been made public on the SDRplay earlier devices, anyone can freely assemble different semiconductors to replicate a decent SDR.  The device shown in the video uses separate band pass filters which is actually nice so the user can have spectrum specific antennae in use without the extra noise or complexity of electronic switching or the need for software to control that. This is why the SDR is so inexpensive.

Now that enough time has passed since I purchased these "clone" SDR devices and there are some improvements to protect SDRplay in place, now is a great time to get back to this.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805375754709.html

Any SDR based around the MSI2500 and MSI001 are unique compared to the R820T, 828D  and RTL2832U in that these support 10 MHz of bandwidth for around the same cost for those offering 3.2 MHz.  Another example is this one in a smaller form factor around the same size as the RTL-SDR devices, but with the extra filtering loses the wider frequency coverage above 1 GHz.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804660151348.html

There is an older video from 2021 where I showed how to get the SDRplay driver working with SDRangel below, but the new video instead focuses on an enclosure I designed for these 5 port SDR devices since I forgot to order them. The benefit however is a small case and simple design.

Here is the 2021 video talking about getting the SDRplay API to allow an SDRplay. Please note that this will not work any longer due to changes made by SDRplay, but there is an alternative version available called libmirisdr you can search for on your own or until I make a video about that.

Would you like the STL or OBJ or 3MF or STEP files for my case design? Please leave some nice and friendly comments in the video called Controversial SDR: Plus 3-D Printing Stuff  and will see what happens next. :)