SDR-Radio.com Supports bladeRF

[Montezuma]

Any reason for the initial frequency range of the bladeRF to be set to 50 - 3800 MHz? Editing it for users of the expansion board, when it is available, is a good idea, but wouldn't it be best to have the initial setup to have the range set to 300 - 3800 MHz?

Hi,

That's just the default I plugged in, of course you can change this. I don't think there's a way I can detect the presence of the HF board at the moment, so I'll change the default range to 300MHz - 3.8 GHz and see what happens when the HF board is available.

Oh, I don't see it as an issue either way, I was just curious as to why you elected to set the range to that band. I thought I remembered a discussion on the bladeRF being able to tune to frequencies slightly lower than the stated low end range of the LM chip, though I'm not sure if that is true, or if it would produce any usable result. As far is on the high end range, I am also unsure of.

[SDR-Radio.com]

OK.

Anyway the bladeRF is a fine radio, just want the HF board for the 137MHz APT weather satellites and also those pesky Hams on 144MHz.

[cmh716]

I just got my BladeRF and tried sdr-radio. At rates above 20MHz, i get a lot of stuttering. At 38MHz capture rate, the sir-radio process is only using 30% CPU according to the task manager. Any ideas what the bottleneck could be? Thanks - love the sdr-radio pgm

[Montezuma]

I just got my BladeRF and tried sdr-radio. At rates above 20MHz, i get a lot of stuttering. At 38MHz capture rate, the sir-radio process is only using 30% CPU according to the task manager. Any ideas what the bottleneck could be? Thanks - love the sdr-radio pgm

Could you provide more information? Are you using USB 3.0, with a "Super Speed" cable? What type of host computer are you using(CPU, amount of RAM, etc)? I haven't experienced any "shuttering", while running at 38.4 MHz, on a i7 4770k(overclocked to 4.0 GHz, but there is no reduced performance at 3.50 GHz), 16 GB 1866 MHz DDR3 RAM, a MSI Z87 XPower motherboard(all drivers updated to current), with a GTX Titan, and using a rear USB 3.0 port(AsRock USB 3.0, I believe).

Aside from hardware issues, have you checked other programming running, or simply tried rebooting?

[cmh716]

Hi, thanks for the response. It's a 16GB memory Supermicro Board with an i7-3612QE quad core CPU 2.1GHz/3.1GHz turbo. HDD is a fast intel mSATA unit. The sdr-radio.exe process is only using 30% CPU. I'm using the onboard Intel USB 3.0 ports and the cable that came with the BladeRF (SuperSpeed). I am using a USB 2.0 sound card (on a separate USB controller). I wonder if that could cause it. There's a definite lag at higher capture rates. When I turn Disable the VFO, there is a several second delay before I stop hearing audio. So it's definitely "behind" on processing the data which puzzles me because the process is only using 30% CPU and under 1.5GB of memory. I checked again and it's actually lagging and stuttering at sample rates over 10MHz.

[cmh716]

I just checked Performance-->Options-->Queues at 30MHz sampling and all the lengths are low except for Main FFT. That's upwards of 270

[on4bhm]

What do i need of drivers in order to run sdr-radio with my bladeRF?

[SDR-Radio.com]

I just checked Performance-->Options-->Queues at 30MHz sampling and all the lengths are low except for Main FFT. That's upwards of 270

Interesting...

Now in SDR-Radio I do *not* throw away data to keep CPU down as throwing away data will reducing the FFT (waterfall) quality. There is a trick I can use - simple - allow two or more threads to process FFT data, that should solve the issue. Until I do this check the ribbon bar's Display / Resolution setting and make sure it's set to Default.

Or use a lower sample rate...

I would like to see a screenshot of the attached window - just click the camera in the bottom left.

[SDR-Radio.com]

What do i need of drivers in order to run sdr-radio with my bladeRF?

None - if the bladeRF works with the command-line programs then you're good to go.

[cmh716]

Screenshot-2013-10-25-091328.png

Screenshot-2013-10-25-091328.png

[cmh716]

sorry. somehow it loaded a picture twice

[syntroniks]

I've updated everything to its latest, sdr-radio complains it can not get exclusive access (no I don't have bladeRF-cli running somewhere)
I tried the 64 bit version of the application as well

[SDR-Radio.com]

I've updated everything to its latest, sdr-radio complains it can not get exclusive access (no I don't have bladeRF-cli running somewhere)
I tried the 64 bit version of the application as well

This is because the software can't create a Mutex (lock). I've seen this with someone else (unless it's you).

Have you installed any special security software or changed your Windows account? A normal user can create a Mutex.

You say you tried the 64-bit as well - how did you manage to install the 32-bit version on a 64-bit platform?

Something's not right.

[cmh716]

I'm using default resolution on the waterfall now but it's still stuttering. Looking forward to the multi-process FFT version. Thanks for the hard work on this great software.

[SDR-Radio.com]

I'm using default resolution on the waterfall now but it's still stuttering. Looking forward to the multi-process FFT version. Thanks for the hard work on this great software.

Hi,

*please* post a screenshot, http://v2.sdr-radio.com/Support.aspx . I would love to see what you're doing. Attach the logfile here as well please, maybe in a ZIP?