SDR++ HL2 support development progress

[Alexandre Rouma]

Hi,

Just creating this thread so I can post updates about HL2 support properly instead of posting in the original "Estate items" threads.

Again, thanks a lot to everyone who donated to be able to get the HL2 to me.
Accordng to the local post, the parcel should arrive next week, so I'll try to add support for the HL2 next weekend.

Alexandre ON5RYZ.

[Alexandre Rouma]

Just an update,

Most of the features are now implemented and I'm successfully streaming data from the hermes.
All that's left is implementing filter control and some code cleanup.
Should be able to push the fully working version next weekend.

Alexandre ON5RYZ

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Alexandre,

That is great news. Thanks for the update! Is SDR++ receive only or does it also support transmit?

73,

Steve

kf7o

[Alexandre Rouma]

Hi,

For now SDR++ is a receive-only application. The architecture and user interface was not made with transmit in mind so adding it would require redesigning most of the core software.

73,
Alexandre ON5RYZ

[Alexandre Rouma]

The latest SDR++ nightly now contains the fully working HL2 module.
https://www.sdrpp.org/nightly
(redirects to the github CI page, an account is needed to download, github's limitation, not my choice.)

There is a still an issue or two with the streaming code so you may very occasionally get frame drops but that's about it.
Will try to address it this weekend, so please report back if you notice any unusual or inconsistent behavior.

I also implemented support for the band filters, which I can't test properly because the unit I have seems to have a mix & match of parts which don't really work as expected with other software.
I've set them up to work like SDRConsole but that's about it.

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Alexandre,

Great work! I will have to try it out.

73,

Steve

kf7o

[Brad Mathisen]

I can hear the band filters clicking on and off as I roll through the different bands with the latest SDR++.  It does not appear to have any of the filters enabled for 11m though.  In SDR Console you can chose which filters to apply to each band.  The default settings do not enable the filter board for "Other" but in SDR Console I select filters 5 and 6 for 11m  (not listed) under "Other" just like they apply to 10m and 12m and it helps tremendously.  Any plans on allowing being able to select the filter boards?

[Alexandre Rouma]

On 11m two filters should be enabled: 3MHz high pass and the highest low pass (don't remember the exact frequency).
For now I'm not yet sure how I'll handle filters. The issue is I guess not everyone has the same filter setup which requires being able to set it up.

[Sid Boyce]

I built on openSUSE Tumbleweed.
I get nothing from my HL2.
Regards
Sid.

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[Alexandre Rouma]

From the first screenshot it doesn't seem to have found a HL2 on any network. Do you maybe have some firewall rules setup?
Try pessing refresh in case the HL2 was started after SDR++ enumerated the devices.
SDR++ sends 5 discovery on every broadcast address on the system, maybe your network setup is unusual?
haven't had the time to test myself on linux yet but there shouldn't be any reason for it to not work.

[Sid Boyce]

Internal firewall is not enabled.
No problems with SparkSDR, pihpsdr or quisk which finds it using dhcp.

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[Alexandre Rouma]

Hi,

I'm finally back from the university exams so I can get back to work on this.

You say it's finding it using DHCP, what do you mean by that? 
The specification on github says to find HL2 devices a broadcast UDP packet has to be sent. This is the only method SDR++ uses.
Am I missing something here?

Best regard,
Alexandre Rouma ON5RYZ

[Craig Cook]

Sorry to interrupt the Hermes group, but Alexandre I saw that at one point you were attempting to support the Afedri SDR-NET device.

I think that guy provides all of the info, but you wanted hardware? I have hardware to loan. I love SDR++ and really wish it would support this Afedri Hardware.

Thank you for considering.  

[Alexandre Rouma]

Hi,

I did try at some point since I've had a lot of requests to support it.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get my hands on one and the manufacturer refused to give any unit stating that SDR++:

"seems to have poor processing power with frozen spectrum and waterfall when frequency is changed, looks not good."
(yes, that's all false, but they're not gonna change their opinion)

As I stated in many other hardware support requests, I cannot support hardware that I do not have *permanent* access to.
Supporting hardware is much more than just making it work once and hoping for the best, it's constant testing, refactoring and improvement over the lifetime of the software.
New software, firmware and hardware versions can and do cause issues, so a test unit is always mandatory.

Unrelated but wanted to mention in the conversation: I'm still looking for what that DHCP detection thing is, I want to make sure it works properly before the next release is done. (for those who haven't already, you can try the Hermes Lite module by using the nightly version)

Best regards,
Alexandre Rouma (ON5RYZ)

[Craig Cook]

Yes, I saw that. He can be a bit difficult at times it appears. We also all try to communicate in English, but we all have our own version.

You can keep this unit if you want, it is the HF only version. I would need to use the HF/VHF+ version (I own several) so if this HF only one differs greatly from the HF/VHF+ version I'll keep it. That's the unit I wish SDR++ supported.

[Salim Hameed]

I have been trying sdrpp with: sdrpp_ubuntu_jammy_amd64.deb on a Ubuntu system. It looks like HL2 is not getting detected (I get an empty selection list under "Hermes" when Hermes is elected).

I am able to use SparkSDR from the same computer to control and receive using the same HL2.

73 de salim vu2lid / n8li

[Alexandre Rouma]

> You can keep this unit if you want, it is the HF only version. I would need to use the HF/VHF+ version (I own several)

I'll do a bit of research on it to see what differences there are between the units. Feel free to send me an email directly to discuss this further.

> It looks like HL2 is not getting detected (I get an empty selection list under "Hermes" when Hermes is elected).

Are you running the latest nightly? Did you try pressing refresh? If so could you describe the network topology between the PC and HL2 so I can try to replicate the issue here?

Best regards,
Alexandre Rouma (ON5RYZ)

[Salim Hameed]

On Tuesday, 7 February 2023 at 15:18:06 UTC-5 Alexandre Rouma wrote:

> It looks like HL2 is not getting detected (I get an empty selection list under "Hermes" when Hermes is elected).

Are you running the latest nightly? Did you try pressing refresh? If so could you describe the network topology between the PC and HL2 so I can try to replicate the issue here?

Yes it is the latest nightly build for Ubuntu. Yes tried the refresh button - no effect. PC and HL2 are on the same network (something like 192.168.16.* ) with no firewall in between (static IP address and host names get assigned to all the devices by a connected router in the same network).

73 de vu2lid / n8li

[Sid Boyce]

Built the latest git getting errors on modules It's looking for an
earlier version of libvolk.
slipstream:/c1/XXX/SDRPlusPlus/build #ldd
/usr/lib/sdrpp/plugins/hermes_source.so
       linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffeecac1000)
       libsdrpp_core.so => /usr/local/lib64/libsdrpp_core.so
(0x00007f1365e00000)
       libglfw.so.3 => /lib64/libglfw.so.3 (0x00007f13664cd000)
       libOpenGL.so.0 => /lib64/libOpenGL.so.0 (0x00007f1365dd3000)
       libGLX.so.0 => /lib64/libGLX.so.0 (0x00007f1365da1000)
       libGLU.so.1 => /lib64/libGLU.so.1 (0x00007f1365d49000)
       libfftw3f.so.3 => /lib64/libfftw3f.so.3 (0x00007f1365bd6000)
       libvolk.so.2.5 => not found
       libzstd.so.1 => /lib64/libzstd.so.1 (0x00007f1365b24000)
       libstdc++.so.6 => /lib64/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f1365800000)
       libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00007f136571c000)
       libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f1365aff000)
       libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f1365521000)
       /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f13665e1000)
       libvolk.so.2.5 => not found
       libX11.so.6 => /lib64/libX11.so.6 (0x00007f13653db000)
       libGLdispatch.so.0 => /lib64/libGLdispatch.so.0
(0x00007f1365a48000)
       libGL.so.1 => /lib64/libGL.so.1 (0x00007f136534e000)
       libxcb.so.1 => /lib64/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007f1365323000)
       libXau.so.6 => /lib64/libXau.so.6 (0x00007f13664c2000)
slipstream:/c1/XXX/SDRPlusPlus/build #rpm -ql libvolk3_0
/usr/lib64/libvolk.so.3.0
/usr/lib64/libvolk.so.3.0.0

73 ... Sid.

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[Bob Lawrence]

> I have been trying sdrpp with: sdrpp_ubuntu_jammy_amd64.deb on a Ubuntu system. It looks like HL2 is not getting detected (I get an empty selection list under "Hermes" when Hermes is elected).

> Are you running the latest nightly? Did you try pressing refresh? If so could you describe the network topology between the PC and HL2 so I can try to replicate the issue here?

I'm encountering a similar problem. I select the source as "Hermes" and see nothing selectable in the drop down. Pressing refresh does not find anything. I'm using version 1.1.0 built March 2, 2023 on Linux Mint 21.1 (Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy" based). Same computer and same radio are working with both Quisk and SparkSDR. Both devices are plugged into the same switch and are on the same subnet (client IP: 192.168.1.176, hermes IP: 192.168.1.140). No firewall active between the two. Pinging the hermes from the command line works.

Is there perhaps a way to manually specify the IP of the Hermes?

[ron.ni...@gmail.com]

I've seen systems where pinging and UDP Protocol 1 work to an HL2 just fine, but UDP broadcast does not.  So instead of just using UDP broadcast to detect an HL2, I added an option to hl2_tcp (on GitHub, should run on any Linux or macOS system) to flood the local subnet with UDP Discovery packets to port 1024, to see if anybody (a found HL2) replies.

73, Ron, n6ywu

[Alexandre Rouma]

I guess that's one possible fix but flooding a network with hundreds (or thousands depending on the subnet size) of UDP packets isn't a great idea... If done on a public network it would probably trigger some red flags.

Should try to understand why the UDP broadcast packets aren't getting to the device instead.

[ron.ni...@gmail.com]

The blocking of UDP broadcasts seemed likely to be an OS or router firewall issue not under the user accounts control.  256 packets in one second is less than the lowest UDP packet rate when running protocol 1.  But, yes, not a suitable strategy on a very large LAN or public WAN.

[Clifford Heath]

UDP broadcasts should not normally get routed. A switch passes them of course. If you want them routed you might have to reconfigure your router.

Clifford Heath 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hermes-lite/3464cadc-3583-4a42-b251-31d9868f26c6n%40googlegroups.com.

[Bob Lawrence]

I think we are over thinking this. Routing protocols are not involved. This is a very simple layer 2 domain with only about a dozen devices on it total. Just a typical single subnet home network. It doesn't get any simpler. Either the broadcasts aren't being sent or the answer is not being received (I think it's safe to say the hl2 firmware is doing the same thing every time).

[Alan Hopper]

I found the thing to do was send the broadcast packet to each ip4 address of each network adapter detected on the computer. 

73 Alan M0NNB

[Heath Petty]

I also hit the issue with sdr++ not finding my HL2. I built from the latest master today (Mar 20th) on my raspberry pi 4. I gathered a tcpdump while sdr++ was starting and saw the follwing:

$ sudo tcpdump -i eth0 "ether broadcast and host 192.168.1.18"
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v[v]... for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), snapshot length 262144 bytes
16:53:56.467927 IP 192.168.1.18.48322 > 255.255.255.255.48321: UDP, length 56 << this looks like the discovery packet sent by sdr++
16:53:56.475341 IP 192.168.1.18.33782 > 192.168.1.255.49152: UDP, length 16
16:53:56.475681 IP 192.168.1.18.37731 > 192.168.1.255.49152: UDP, length 84
16:53:56.476214 IP 192.168.1.18.36283 > 192.168.1.255.49600: UDP, length 8
16:53:56.476293 IP 192.168.1.18.49473 > 192.168.1.255.49152: UDP, length 36
16:54:50.734959 IP 192.168.1.18.36087 > 255.255.255.255.1024: UDP, length 63 << these are the discovery packets sent by SparkSDR
16:54:50.735005 IP 192.168.1.18.36087 > 255.255.255.255.1024: UDP, length 60

It looks like to me the broadcast packages are going to the wrong port?

Heath