I wrote for myself an octave wrapper for all functions in the header file of the rtl-sdr library. Even the async routine generates a callback to octave functions. The whole is a 1-to-1 mapping of the functions, I tried to stay as close as possible to the C-library. I do not know if it just me using octave, but if there is any interest in this code, I could place it somewhere. sample code: pkg load rtlsdr if rtlsdr_get_device_count()>0 dev = rtlsdr_open(0); samprate=2048e3; nsamples=2048; rtlsdr_set_sample_rate(dev, samprate); rtlsdr_set_center_freq(dev, 100e6); rtlsdr_set_tuner_gain_mode(dev, 0); rtlsdr_reset_buffer(dev); buf = rtlsdr_read_sync(dev, nsamples * 2); d = (double(buf) - 128) / 128.0; d = d(1:2:end) + 1i * d(2:2:end); f = (-.5:1/nsamples:.5-1/nsamples) * samprate; plot(f, 20*log10(abs(fftshift(fft(d .* blackman(nsamples)') / nsamples)))); rtlsdr_close(dev); end