rtl-sdr on Mac OSX

Building rtl-sdr on Mac OSX

Device used

You can use a number of compatible devices. The one I used was:

Nooelec NESDR SMArTee v2 (Generic RTL2832U
For more info and compatible devices you can check https://osmocom.org/projects/rtl-sdr/wiki/Rtl-sdrhttp://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

Install pre-requisites (check your own environment)

This may be deifferent for your specifiy enviroment, so check it and adapt it. I used a MacOS laptop as platform, using homebrew https://brew.sh

brew install cmake libusb pkgconfig

Optionally you can install brew install sox (Sound eXchange for easy audio)

Get Source code and install it

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git
For more information on the installation you can check https://osmocom.org/projects/rtl-sdr/wiki/Rtl-sdr#Source-Code . I put here the steps for you:

cd rtl-sdr
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib
sudo make install

Test installation

To test the installation just open a terminal and try this command:

rtl_test -t

The output should be something similar to:

Found 1 device(s):
  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Supported gain values (29): 0.0 0.9 1.4 2.7 3.7 7.7 8.7 12.5 14.4 15.7 16.6 19.7 20.7 22.9 25.4 28.0 29.7 32.8 33.8 36.4 37.2 38.6 40.2 42.1 43.4 43.9 44.5 48.0 49.6 
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Sampling at 2048000 S/s.
No E4000 tuner found, aborting.

If this is the case... Congratulations !