We've just activated a brand new RTL-SDR Blog forum based on the Discourse platform, and we will be retiring the old phpBB boards. If you have any questions or want to share anything relating to RTL-SDRs, SDRs, or the radio hobby in general, please feel free to log on and make a post.

For troubleshooting questions, please be sure to include as much detail as possible about the issue, such as exact error messages, what you are trying to achieve, and ideally add screenshots showing your settings. Also, please remember that for questions relating to specific software, you will probably get the best help by asking in discussion groups specifically for that software, or by emailing the authors of those programs directly.

We've decided to retire the old phpBB forums due to excessive spam that has proved extremely difficult to combat. phpBB has limited plugins available that actually work for spambot detection. We've tried adding captchas, technical barrier questions, using spambot block lists, spambot blocking services, and setting a high security setting on Cloudflare. But nothing has been able to stop the new ChatGPT/AI powered spambots.

These spambots are particularly insidious because they ask legitimate-sounding questions to start a discussion and may even reply with legitimate-sounding responses. Later, once trust has been established with humans and the forum spambot detection software, they will start posting spam links, and editing old posts to include subtle spam links.

The new forums are based on Discourse, and are available here https://rtl-sdr.discourse.group/

Based on our previous experience, Discourse is a much more modern platform and has much better natural spambot protection, so spambots shouldn't be a problem on that platform.

If you've been a fan of these forums, please make an account on our Discourse forum. Thanks!

As usual, for inquiries relating to RTL-SDR Blog product faults, or shipping issues, please email us directly at [email protected] with your order ID number included for direct help.

The old forums will stay up for archival reasons, but they will be locked from now on.