Nooelec TV28T V2 DVB for SDR

It isn't enough that I'm tinkering with the Stellaris Launchpad; I also got one of those $20.00 DVB dongles to play with for SDR.  It's a Nooelec TV28T V2.  Basically, it's a European/Asian digital TV on a USB stick.  The reason I have it is to tinker with SDR - software defined radio.  It turns out that this little widget works fine for that.

 This is the dongle opened up.  Not much to it, is there?  This uses the R820T tuner instead of the older E4000.  The other big chip is the RTL2832U.

To open the dongle, I used a small screwdriver at the antenna connector.  Now that I have it open, I see that the easiest way is to press in the catches at the marked arrows.  The catch is on the larger half of the clamshell, the side with the NooElec logo.

I'm thinking I'm going to re-box this and maybe put an SMA connector there.  We'll see.

CT1FFU has a neat HF converter that looks interesting.

I loaded SDR# from the 'installer'  link and the TV28T fired up like a champ after I tweaked the RF gain.  Can listen to my local FM stations even with the junky little antenna that comes with it.  Also, my local 444.000 FM repeater.

Here's a Jing capture of SDR# playing my local  FM station, WMHT 89.1 MHz with the little whip antenna.

TI Stellaris Launchpad

So I bought a Stellaris Launchpad from TI.  It's quite a lot like the MSP430 Launchpad, but it has an ARM Cortex M4F on it.  I'm going through the YouTube tutorials via the TI Workshop.  The main point of this post is to accumulate the links I'll need to get back to this.  The workshop PDF is here, and it's detailed enough to really be a grounding in MCU architecture as well as specifics on the M4F.  TI have a forum on their 'E2E Community'.  There is a great pile of application notes and other documents here.  Putty works fine as the serial console.  Just remember to check device manager to find which serial port the ICDI driver has assigned to the USB stick.