gnuradio on HF

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n8me
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:58 pm

gnuradio on HF

Post by n8me » Sun Dec 20, 2015 7:31 pm

Has anyone had any success getting gnuradio / gr-osmocom working with the sdrplay on HF (< 30 MHz)?

I've had some success getting gr-osmocom working with sdrplay on VHF. Most of my testing is done with local FM broadcast stations (88 - 108 MHz), but no luck on HF. My testing here has been in the 3.5 and 7.0 MHz amateur bands.

I have HDSDR working under Ubuntu Linux 14.04 and it works on both HF and VHF. However, when I switch to gnuradio and try some experiments, it seems like something gets messed up in the sdrplay and I have to unplug and replug the USB plug to reset the sdrplay.

Here's the steps that can reproduce things for me. I fire up HDSDR and monitor the amateur traffic on 40 meters (LSB around 7.25 MHz). Everything sounds find. I stop HDSDR and run a flowgraph in gnuradio. The flowgraph is simply an gr-osmocom source connected to a WX GUI FFT Sink. I don't get a frequency display similar to what I see on HDSDR, no matter what settings I try. I then exit gnuradio and restart the sdrplay on HDSDR. The same stations heard before are heard on different frequencies, sound garbled and multiple stations are heard on top of each other. If I then unplug and replug the USB on the sdrplay, it sounds normal as before. I'm assuming that the gr-osmocom block is somehow messing with the parameters in the sdrplay. I tried saving a profile from when the sdrplay was sounding "normal" and restoring the profile when it was "messed up," but that didn't help. I still had to cycle the power.

I'd really like to see sdrplay working with gnuradio. The main reason I bought the sdrplay (I have other SDR radios, including a FlexRadio 6700 and a Softrock), so that I could experiment with SDR on HF.

73,
Mark
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KK6JR
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2015 12:57 pm

Re: gnuradio on HF

Post by KK6JR » Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:18 pm

I'm getting some poor LSB sigs on 40meters with CubicSDR and a dipole up perhaps 30ft. Honest RS report perhaps 26. Certainly not 59!
I'm puzzled that I can't at least take the commercial intruders on 40m. AGC is fairly slow, which is probably a good thing.
I suspect that neither CubicSDR nor we when using GNU Radio know how to correctly drive the filters (and amps?) in the SDRPlay front end.
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bplipschitz
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2016 12:57 pm

Re: gnuradio on HF

Post by bplipschitz » Sat Feb 13, 2016 1:07 pm

I realize this is an old thread, but I'm interested in how you're running HDSDR in Linux -- VM with a Windows install?

Currently I'm running CubicSDR which is OK for alpha ware, but I really would like some choices in filter modes, AGC, etc.
Last edited by bplipschitz on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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sdrplay
Posts: 978
Joined: Wed Jan 07, 2015 7:58 am

Re: gnuradio on HF

Post by sdrplay » Tue Feb 23, 2016 1:31 am

We are in the process of rewriting the SoapySDR interface for the RSP which we aim to have the same functionality as we provide in the ExtIO interface on Windows.

Best regards,

SDRplay Support
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bplipschitz
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2016 12:57 pm

Re: gnuradio on HF

Post by bplipschitz » Tue Feb 23, 2016 8:03 pm

As a reply to my own post, I am able to run HDSDR via wine on Ubuntu 14.04.

Seems to work ok. I'm going to have a crack at GnuRadio and see if I can do anything interesting with that. . .
Last edited by bplipschitz on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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