GNU Radio Companion Flow Graph for Blade?

[LarryJ]

A GNU Radio Flow Graph (.grc) example would make testing easier once the board arrives. The site http://openhpsdr.org has some examples of .grc flow graphs that apply to the TAPR Hermes SDR/ Apache labs ANAN series SDR. Perhaps these might make a good starting point since the concept of the Blade and TAPR Hermes boards are somewhat similar.

[tonyfromspace]

Perhaps the first step is to build the device driver block analogous to the RTL2832 or Funcube Dongle
source to support our bladeRF as a gnuradio source. Perhaps Nuand has something like this that they
use for testing.

[jettero]

Indeed. I'm most excited about GNU Radio use. I've been under the hood a few times... I imagine I could write a driver, but I think the level above mine actually mentions the GNU Radio driver will be developed by nuand.

So, then the flow graph looks like this:

ur_project.png

[jettero]

I kid, I kid.

Here's what I'm going to do with mine 90% of the time, particularly during the honeymoon phase.

[wx5cw]

Here is the setup I have that currently works for the bladerf in gnuradio.
However make sure to load the setup.txt file for the inital configuration of the sytem via bladerf-cli then exit that and then load the gnuradio-companion and lauch the grc. Note: you might have to chmod 757 /dev/bladerf to get the grc to load and connect to the bladeRF. I will be posting a detailed walk though soon to help others get up and running with gnuradio.

bladeconfig.png

gnuradio-bladerf.png

[2011EE10487]

Hi wx5cw,
I am trying to make a similar flowgraph as you have posted above. I have used the osmocom block and set all the settings as you have specified, but the spectrum that I am getting is not as expected. Its very oscillating and I am not sure what the error is. Can you please give the steps of your implementation.

Thanks

[2011EE10487]

Hi jynik,
Thanks for your fast reply.
I have tried USB 3.0 and also used lower sample rate. I have tried osmocon_fft but it is also giving the similar output. Further I don't know how to check the version of grosmosdr so if you could help me with this. And I am giving the link to the video of the fft https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5ZnEv ... sp=sharing.

Thanks

[scancapecod]

Hi,

I'll inject my completely non-technical .02 for what it's worth. Looking at the video I see something that looks suspiciously like the problems I was having with USB 3.0 and Windows 8.1 using SDR-Radio software. I ultimately solved it by installing a PCI-E USB 3.0 card that did not rely on Windows drivers as the Intel chipsets in Windows 8 seem to.

I may be way off the mark but are you having any success using a USB 2.0 port?

Scott

edit: Here's a screenshot of the problem I was having. At some points during your video it looks similar...again, for what it's worth:

[2011EE10487]

No I didn't have any success with USB 2.0 either.

[2011EE10487]

Hi jynik,
Sorry for the late reply as I was on a vacation for a week. I've checked my versions of all things related to bladeRF. Here is the output of version command.

bladeRF-cli version: 0.10.2-git-9023f69
libbladeRF version: 0.12.1-git-9023f69
Firmware version: 1.6.0-git-89d57ff
FPGA version: 0.0.2

and the output of info command is

Serial #: e7130d59a56ffc2cb3c77e019a435981
VCTCXO DAC calibration: 0xa081
FPGA size: 40 KLE
FPGA loaded: yes
USB bus: 7
USB address: 2
USB speed: SuperSpeed
Backend: libusb
Instance: 0

On checking the version of osmosdr I am getting the output as
5410ee53.
Further I couldn't git clone from osmocon repo because of some error. So I cloned from https://github.com/bert/gr-osmosdr, And according to this https://github.com/bert/gr-osmosdr/commits/master my version is the newest.
Also if you have written the wiki can you share it here also.

Thanks.

[2011EE10487]

I tried running the command git clone git://git.osmocom.org/gr-osmosdr and I'm getting the following message.
Cloning into 'gr-osmosdr'...
fatal: unable to connect to git.osmocom.org:
git.osmocom.org[0: 144.76.43.76]: errno=Connection refused
git.osmocom.org[1: 2a01:4f8:191:444b::2:5]: errno=Network is unreachable.

I guess this is because I'm behind a proxy server. So I run the following command (This I use to git clone other repositries from behind the proxy) git clone https://git.osmocom.org/gr-osmosdr. When I gave this command I got the following error.

fatal: https://git.osmocom.org/gr-osmosdr/info/refs not found: did you run git update-server-info on the server?

[2011EE10487]

Hi jynik,
I've solved the issue of cloning the latest git repo. But now when I'm building the osmocom block (using the wiki http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/GrOsmoSDR) I could successfully complete the command cmake ../ but when I've given the command make, it gave the following error

/home/shubham/Documents/gr-osmosdr/lib/bladerf/bladerf_source_c.cc: In member function ‘virtual int bladerf_source_c::work(int, gr_vector_const_void_star&, gr_vector_void_star&)’:
/home/shubham/Documents/gr-osmosdr/lib/bladerf/bladerf_source_c.cc:163:65: error: ‘bladerf_sync_rx’ was not declared in this scope
make[2]: *** [lib/CMakeFiles/gnuradio-osmosdr.dir/bladerf/bladerf_source_c.cc.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [lib/CMakeFiles/gnuradio-osmosdr.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2.

If you have any idea how to solve this problem then please help me out.

Thanks

[2011EE10487]

Thanks for your help. I could solve that issue after getting the new version of libbladerf. But after getting the new version of all(libbladerf, bladerf-cli an osmocom), when I tried to run osmocom_fft I got the following message.
linux; GNU C++ version 4.7.2; Boost_104900; UHD_003.006.002-64-g92b0b7ab

gr-osmosdr v0.1.0-78-g1e8b45d0 (0.1.1git) gnuradio 3.7.2.1
built-in source types: file fcd rtl rtl_tcp uhd hackrf bladerf rfspace
[bladeRF source] Using nuand LLC bladeRF #0 SN e713...5981 FW v1.6.1 FPGA v0.0.2
LNA gain range: start 0 stop 6 step 3
VGA1 gain range: start 5 stop 30 step 1
VGA2 gain range: start 0 stop 30 step 3
Supported sample rates 160000-40000000 step 40000.
Using Volk machine: avx_64_mmx_orc
Set center frequency to 1000000000.0
python2: /home/shubham/bladeRF/host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/sync_worker.c:78: rx_callback: Assertion `b->status[samples_idx] == SYNC_BUFFER_IN_FLIGHT' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)
.
I tried creating my own flowgraph for spectru analyser in gnuradio and execute it but I got the same error in that too. So if you could please help in solving this out.

[2011EE10487]

Hi,
I've pulled the latest from master and the error is removed now. But after all this it seems that I'm still getting the discontinuites as the output of spectrum analyser that I got is same as before.

[bpadalino]

Can you run the osmo FFT command with "--oscilloscope" at the end of it and show a movie or describe what the output looks like on the XY tab? This will give us time domain information. Looking at spectrum like that doesn't really give me a good understanding other than "Things are bad". Time domain will let me know if you are saturating (which is my guess) and by how much.

If you are saturating - lower your gains until you aren't. Things should appear much more sane at that point.

Brian