I really in my heart wanted the RTL_433 to work. To be fair it kind of does, but it is so so much easier to use a superhet on esp8266 then RTL on a PC.
The polling on Linux on a microcomputer just does not match up to real time on a microcontroller.
Maybe there are a couple things I am doing wrong, like the wrong antenna size or not using a USB extension to move the dongle farther from the PC, maybe a faster PC.
SDR is still fun though.