RTL-SDR cheap USB TV dongles become super cheap USRP radios!!!
That’s right folks. Software radio just became mainstream. Up until last summer you paid £1000+ for a USRP, then came along the £120 Funcube dongle. Now you can learn all about SDR for £20.
You can now use a £20 USB DVB-TV Stick to receive any frequency from 64-1700MHz at a high bandwidth sample rate of 2.8MS/s. Required chipset is RTL2832U & Elonics E4000 tuner combo. Known good units are EzCapTV 668 & 666 units, along with a host of similar boards.
sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
What has been successfully tested so far is the reception of FM/AM radio, TETRA (police, ambulance, fire), GMR (sat phones), GSM (mobile phones), ADS-B (aircraft data) and POCSAG (pagers).
Go and type RTL-SDR into Youtube and you’ll find loads of great demo videos – like these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0hEquzLsWU
Here’s another good page : http://www.rtlsdr.com/
Some useful Windows SDR# software here