I’m sharing this because several people are running into the same issue with RTL-SDR Blog V4 and Home Assistant OS / Home Assistant Green. After a week of testing, I can confirm the problem is real, reproducible, and not user error.
If you’re trying to run ADS-B (dump1090, multifeeder, FR24, FA, ADSBx, etc.) on HA Green with a V4 dongle, this will save you a lot of time.
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Summary
RTL-SDR Blog V4 does not work on HAOS / Home Assistant Green.
The device is detected, but the tuner fails to initialize, and ADS-B decoding never starts.
Seems this isn’t a config issue or add-on bug — it’s a kernel/driver limitation in HAOS.
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Symptoms
Inside the ADS-B Multi-Portal Feeder add-on:
• No packets
• No aircraft
• RSSI stuck at -100
• All portals report “0 messages” forever
• No logs indicating what failed
Running rtl_test inside the container:
Found 1 device(s):
0: RTLSDRBlog, Blog V4, SN: 00000001
Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R828D tuner
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Sampling at 2048000 S/s.
No E4000 tuner found, aborting.
The important line is: PLL not locked
This means the tuner cannot achieve a valid frequency lock → dump1090 gets garbage → no ADS-B frames.
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Why This Happens
Home Assistant Green OS uses a locked-down Linux kernel.
It currently does NOT include full RTL-SDR Blog V4 (R828D) support:
• missing tuner patches
• missing bias-tee (rtl_biast) support
• RTL-SDR V4 requires a newer rtl-sdr-blog driver chain (1.3.x+)
• HAOS cannot load custom kernel modules or DKMS (by design)
The result:
Userland librtlsdr sees the device, but the kernel driver doesn’t support it properly → PLL never locks.
This is something add-ons cannot fix.
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Important: The Dongle Is NOT Defective
To rule out hardware issues, I tested the same V4 dongle on:
• Windows (works instantly)
• macOS (dump1090 built using Nix, works perfectly)
So the device itself is fine.
This is 100% an HAOS kernel limitation.
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Workarounds
- Use an external machine for decoding (recommended)
Run dump1090-fa on any system outside HAOS:
• macOS
• Linux laptop
• Raspberry Pi
• NAS
• Mini PC
Then forward Beast data (port 30005) to Home Assistant add-ons or containers.
Example architecture:
RTL-SDR V4 → dump1090-fa (external host) → Beast TCP 30005 → Docker feeders on HA
This works somewhat reliably (had issues with MLAT calculations).
- Use a different dongle
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Who This Affects
• Home Assistant Green users
• HAOS users running the ADS-B multi-feeder add-on
• Anyone using RTL-SDR Blog V4
• Anyone who wants FR24 / FlightAware / ADSBexchange from HA
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What Home Assistant Developers Should Know
This issue requires kernel-level driver support, not an add-on update.
RTL-SDR V4 needs:
• newer rtl-sdr patches
• R828D tuning improvements
• bias-tee activation support
• kernel module updates
Until HAOS updates its kernel with V4-ready drivers, the device will not work inside HA.
If anyone needs logs, usb descriptors, or reproducible test data, I can provide it.