Ruuvitags are amazing little devices, I still have the 3 I got from their Kickstarter almost 4 years ago and only one has needed a battery replacement - and it was the one in my sauna.

https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433 is an amazing application. I was once in a similar situation and this app just automatically determined the used protocol!

Any recommendations on where to start if I want to get into playing around with SDR?

If I were in your shoes (and I often am, in various other contexts), I'd get the cheapest SDR dongle, and then use your favorite search engine for tutorials (there's plenty).

First two hits for "how to get started with sdr" on duckduckgo give you awesome starting points: - https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide/ - https://hackaday.com/2012/06/27/getting-started-with-softwar...

From there, figure out what device you're going to target. The 434 MHz devices are quite ubiquitous (and easy to understand) -- door bells, old school thermometers, remote switches, what have you.

Even without your own device, I'm sure you will find plenty of traffic near you (if you live in a reasonably densely populated area), so you can at least practice.

And then it's down to grinding it out -- read docs, experiment, repeat. :-)

HTH.

Super easy, barely an inconvenience. Such a good catchphrase.

:-)

I so wish I could lay claim to that phrase.

In any case, I wholeheartedly recommend giving "Screen Rant Pitch Meeting" a watch (on YT).

I wish I had the same electronics understanding as yours.

Thank you for the compliment.

I can wholeheartedly recommend starting. Just about anywhere, really.

I'm a total noob when compared with real electronics engineers... but it doesn't stop me from trying things out. [it helps that I have extensive IT experience, tho]

And it all gets easier with time, as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty.

And if you want a few pointers, then EEVBlog (on YT), hackaday and adafruit are all fantastic places to help you get started with tinkering.

And if you want to start on a budget, then get a few basic things from china. Or -- the "elegoo" arduino kit (that I got on Amazon for ~$40 a while ago) has plenty of projects to tinker with. And if you go through all of them, you will have plenty of experience under your belt... and it will sort of rub off on you. :-)