MagicSDR 4+

I have to say this is a great app. I had a small issue and the owner got back to me within an hour by email. It’s quite expensive, but it’s worth it for me. The only few things I’d say is that it’s quite difficult to find an online server, most of them are down. It would be nice to be able to save a server as a favourite for future use. I have to write them down to remember them, but it would be a great idea to be able to put servers into a favourite list. It would also be great to only get a list of servers which are actually online. Also it would be nice to be able to see more of the waterfall display, not just 5khz increments. It’s often a bit unresponsive trying to scroll the screen through the frequencies, it’s not smooth. But all that said, it’s a fantastic app. And it gets updated very often, which is good.

Nice app that seems very usable but feels like it’s in early stages of development and missing some basic stuff like squelch. That said it obviously had a lot of work to get it this far. CSV bookmarks import and export would be so helpful. I’ve not had a chance to play much with it but was easy enough to set up and get working. Although not accepting host name and forced to use IP makes you quickly realise where this app is at from the offset, but it’s not the end of the world, just very old school. Once set up you continue to get presented with a basic help / mode selection screen (option to have fake stations etc) when opening the app that is a little frustratingly unnecessary once you’re set up. It seems to have a little Bug: When connected to a receiver you always get what seems like a fake morse code reception bang in the middle of the screen, regardless of selected frequency band, all though you can move the tuning bar off it, it does leave you wondering why it’s there. Anyway none of these are app killers, it all seems very usable, all though as I’m currently in a black spot the only things I’ve received is my own 433MHz sensors transmissions. But it proves this app does work and has the basics in place to be very useable and the foundation for what seems a really cool app. A 5 star app (slowly) in the making 😀 It’s actually not that far off already. I’m looking forward to giving it a proper test next week and intend to update this review accordingly.

Update. Managed to climb out the hole. With my Raspberry Pi and SDR receiver and a bit of wire and I was happily getting radio.
The bandwidth you can listen to at any one time is limited so you need a rough idea of what you want to listen to.
So a little about getting the radio into your iOS device.
I used a Raspberry Pi 3b+ there are plenty of instructions on the internet how to set this with the rtl_tcp software or variant that works your receiver. But the cool bit that you don’t see anyone mention is that from the end of 2022 the Raspberry Pi OS introduced what they call “network manager” it makes it really easy to create a mobile hot spot. I know this has always been possible but now it’s supper easy. You need to plug a screen in to initially set it up (not remote desktop) but if you set the hotspot network priority it will boot as a hotspot (if no other network is found that you have given a higher priority).
So with your SDR dongle, Raspberry Pi, this app and a USB battery pack to power your Pi and you have a very portable SDR setup. Personally I’m very pleased with this setup and pleased I downloaded this app 😀 oh I also use an iOS app called WebSSH it’s great for sending commands to the Pi even if it’s just to shut it down properly. Hope you have loads of fun with it.