after a long period of time I digged out my USRP1 again. What I want to
do with it is some testing in the field of HAM Radio. After some
research I came across the “Software Defined Radio Transceiver” project
[1]. I downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) which seems to be supported here
quite well and installed it. Next step was to get GNU Radio running so I
used the binary installation which seems to have worked also quite well.
Some final work for the USRP hardware and everything almost worked so
far without problems (there was one more with the USRP connection but
this also got solved). The usrp_benchmark worked.
I downloaded the SDR Transceiver project files v1.0.4
(“sdr_transceiver_1.0.4.tar.gz”) from the link below, read the manual
and so on. I opened the command prompt and started “./gui.py” which also
worked quite well. But: it doesn’t work! The first GUI window looks
good. It is for selecting the mode (AM, FM, SSB, CW). But after pressing
the “Select” button no FFT GUI comes up with all the sliders, text boxes
and stuff. I also tried to edit the config_XX.py files.
gr_fir_fff: using SSE
gr_fir_ccf: using SSE
gr_fir_ccc: using SSE
B:
r.baseband_frequency = 0.0
r.dxc_frequency = 14200000.0
r.residual_frequency = -0.762939453125
r.inverted = False
terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std::invalid_argument’
There must be a problem calculating the residual frequency!
Would be great if you could help me as I don’t have any experience with
python.
I’ve got a 32-bit machine running with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), a BasicRX
extension card in the slot of RXA (so far no TX board, maybe someone has
a cheap one?). But at the moment I rather think this might be a software
problem.
Would be great if you could help me as I don’t have any experience with
python.
I’ve got a 32-bit machine running with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), a BasicRX
extension card in the slot of RXA (so far no TX board, maybe someone has
a cheap one?). But at the moment I rather think this might be a software
problem.
Hi Matthias
I tested that software back in January and it worked quite well. I
found in my notes that it required an RX/TX pair mounted on side B of
the USRP. It didn’t work without a transmitter board.
The code is a little difficult to read because it is generated by GRC
then modified by hand and it mixes the receiver and transmitter paths
together. If you are looking for some examples, the gnuradio examples
in /usr/share/gnuradio/examples might be easier to understand.
I tested that software back in January and it worked quite well. I
found in my notes that it required an RX/TX pair mounted on side B of
the USRP. It didn’t work without a transmitter board.
Hello Alex! Thank you for the hint. The problem really was that the
RX/TX pair has to be mounted on side B.
(That’s even where my RX used to be mounted, but I thought it might be
better on side A. ;))
The code is a little difficult to read because it is generated by GRC
then modified by hand and it mixes the receiver and transmitter paths
together. If you are looking for some examples, the gnuradio examples
in /usr/share/gnuradio/examples might be easier to understand.
Thank you!
Jack S. wrote:
Either change the side to A in the software code or change your
daughterboard to B and see if it works for you.
Hello Jack! Thank you very much for your help. Indeed it was the RX
board which was mounted on the wrong side of the motherboard (as
mentioned above). Unfortunately I had some AF problems with my
soundcard, that’s why I just started testing.
Thanks also to the help of Mrs Katz from csun!
For everybody else: I also tested usage of side A, which also works
quite well (so far). But: you’ll have to change the sourcecode for every
mode (AM, CW, FM, SSB). So it’s up to you… take a screwdriver or the
keyboard!
I plugged in an antenna for the RX board, started the program and
switched to a frequency on the 2m band. Then I took my handheld VHF
transceiver and did some “test calls”. If I’ll find the time tomorrow
I’ll play around with the short wave bands (hopefully including
antennas) and the sourcecode.
As I have access to some HF measurement equipment at work I’ll probably
do some more tests. Would be nice if I could help somebody else with
that!
Does somebody on the list sell a BasixTX board for less than $75?
(Europe would be good because of shipping.
Thanks for your help so far, I really appreciate it.
Thank you for your answer. Unfortuately I haven’t found time to answer
so far. I found time for testing last saturday. Some more feedback for
you.
Which test cases did you have?
It worked quite well listening to short wave bands like 40m and 80m. I’m
not sure if I could test 20m and so on as I’ve got a problem with
connectors. Because the USRP has SMA connectors, but I already had
SMA->SMA adaptors. The antennas in our shack have N and PL connectors. I
myself don’t have adaptors that fit so I could have those of another ham
but not for much to long. As I said short wave seems to work quite well
for rx in all modes.
I had problems testing 2m in FM. We have an echolink relais in the next
big city where our mobile trx don’t have problems to demodulate. The
USRP doesn’t see any signal, I also played with the squelch. I also used
my mobile trx for tx and the USRP received some signal but only from
short distance. So this doesn’t seem to work very good. Do you need a
pre-amp? Iirc we also used our directional antenna (??-el yagi) which
didn’t work.
Unfortunately the GUI is not really easy to use. It’s hard to move the
slider to “scan” a specific frequency range. Doing some research I came
across the “simple SSB receiver” OZ9EAC (Alexandru C., also
participating in the list). Haven’t had time and equipment so far to
make some tests but the GUI for scanning the frequencies is probably
better. Would be cool if you could interface a DYI rotary encoder
compared to a traditional VCO (which might not even be a big problem).
Something that’d really be great: have some nice component in the GUI
(whatever this would be) for the frequency (discussed above). Afterwards
it would be great if you could change the mode within a dropdown menu
(CW, AM, USB, LSB, FM, …) or some other GUI component.
You could also add a waterfall sink which shouldn’t be a problem –
started experiment with GRC on saturday evening.
Still looking for a TX board as shipping from US seems to be pretty
expensive. Have you used an amplifier for TX? Like one from
minicircuits…?
Thank you.
Regards,
Matthias
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Can’t get SDR Transceiver running
From: Jack S. [email protected]
To: Matthias W. [email protected]
Date: 21.06.2010 00:25
This forum is not affiliated to the Ruby language, Ruby on Rails framework, nor any Ruby applications discussed here.
So this doesn’t seem to work very good. Do you need a