Gqrx on the Raspberry Pi -- Update

[Alexandru Csete]

Friends of Gqrx,

I have good news!

I have been working hard on making gqrx run on the Rapsberry Pi and I
got to a point where it is running smoothly and stable! I have been
testing tonight using standard Raspbian distribution, an Airspy Mini
and settings that I would think are representative for normal use.

Here are two videos to tease you:
https://youtu.be/Zb4P6UKRTx8
https://youtu.be/cPpB_KhUz8I

Youssef, author of SDR#, has been helping me a lot and he has also
been optimizing libairspy to make it run faster on the RPI. There is
still a lot to do but we are getting there :-)

Please let me know here if you are ready to get your hands dirty with
testing some pre-release code. I will create some test builds next
week that you can try. I also plan to build for Odroid XU4, C1 and C2
later.

Cheers
Alex OZ9AEC

[Larry Dighera]

Hello Alex,

That is good news indeed.

As I have an Airspy Mini and Spyverter, and am able to test on both platforms,
RPi3 and Odroid XU4, just let send me the link(s) to the new gqrx code, and
I'll give it a go.

Is there any necessity to flash any new firmware to the hardware?

Thank you for your hard work.

Best regards,
Larry

[Alexandru Csete]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 5:44 PM, Larry Dighera <LDig...@att.net> wrote:
>
> Hello Alex,
>
> That is good news indeed.
>
> As I have an Airspy Mini and Spyverter, and am able to test on both platforms,
> RPi3 and Odroid XU4, just let send me the link(s) to the new gqrx code, and
> I'll give it a go.
>
> Is there any necessity to flash any new firmware to the hardware?

Hi Larry,

I will only support official Raspbian OS to begin with. For Odroid I
have not decided yet. Don't we all have a handful of micro SD cards
lying around to experiment with ;-)

Alex

[Larry Dighera]

Okay. My RPi3 is running Raspbian Debian Jessie installed from the NOOBS
image. So, it looks like we're on the same page there.

I haven't booted the Odroid XU4 in about a year, so I'll flash a new OS image.
Please let me know which one you are testing with when the time comes.

Yes. I have several little computers, including the SolidRun I4p-300-D
CuBox-i, and a UDOO QUAD <http://shop.udoo.org/usa/quad-dual/udoo-quad.html>.
And, on order is a UDOO X86 ADVANCED
<http://shop.udoo.org/usa/preorder-x86.html> that will run MS Windows in
addition to Linux.

I've enjoyed these mini systems since the early '80s:
<http://kj6yvt.com/speak&spell_Feb1983.PDF>.

[Steve KS1G]

Alex: 
Excellent!  I have a Rpi 3 I recently reflashed to Raspbian Jessie 2016-05-27 (May 2016) and running rtl_fm and direwolf with an old RTL-usb dongle as a receive-only APRS I-gate.  I can test gqrx against the RTL dongle or an SDR-Play.  I also have a FunCube Dongle, not aware of a Linux driver for it (but have not been following development too closely).  I have a year-old Odroid C1 as well (I'll have to dig it out and update the software).

73, Steve KS1G

On Sunday, September 4, 2016 at 6:09:36 PM UTC-4, Alexandru Csete wrote:

Friends of Gqrx,

[Robin Gape]

Steve,

whether you have a very old Funcube Dongle Pro (FCD) or the later—after a chip dropped out of production—Funcube Dongle Pro Plus (FCDPP), then on a modern distribution installing GNU Radio will set up USB automagically. No FCD or FCDPP specific driver is required for Linux (or any other OS, for that matter!)

Cheers,

Robin, G8DQX

[Adrian Musceac]

Hi folks,

I've been following with great interest the new developments for ARM
platforms. This is really great work and will enable a large number of
new uses for Gqrx.
On the same note you might be interested in this small video I made
today of using Gqrx on a standard Android phone (the Moto G) with a
RTL stick. Very useful for going portable.
Video url here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8pE1g6g6rg

It's true the MotoG has a beafier CPU than the raspi, however it still
makes use of the neon_hardfp_orc optimizations.
Note this is stock Gqrx as supplied by Debian Jessie, running inside a
chroot on the Android OS. I did not port my digital modes copy yet
mainly because I'm adding FreeDV 2400A and B support and it does not
build properly yet. The frequency is controlled using the phone's
volume keys.

If some wants to use the USRPs with a phone, it's a different matter,
mainly because the phone does not supply enough current to power the
USRP boards. Some phones do, however it's advisable to use a separate
battery bank in most cases. Also, you won't be able to take advantage
of the USB3 bandwidth, however the phone already struggles a bit with
modest sample rates.

Cheers,
Adrian (YO8RZZ)

On 9/6/16, 'Robin Gape' via Gqrx SDR <gq...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> Steve,
>
> whether you have a very old Funcube Dongle Pro (FCD) or the later—after
> a chip dropped out of production—Funcube Dongle Pro Plus (FCDPP), then
> on a modern distribution installing GNU Radio will set up USB

> automagically. No FCD or FCDPP specific *driver* is required for Linux

> (or any other OS, for that matter!)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Robin, G8DQX
>
>
> On 06/09/16 03:47, Steve KS1G wrote:
>> I also have a FunCube Dongle, not aware of a Linux driver for it (but
>> have not been following development too closely).
>

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[Alexandru Csete]

Fun project and video, Adrian.

It must be a bit painful using the gqrx UI on such small touchscreen :-)

Alex

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gqrx/CA%2ByUT98ujLEYi4s9onYLU16-N05EXif7LNW0KmWBQ4pfrp6m1g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Adrian Musceac]

Hi Alex,
Indeed the control is not ideal, however I suspect a QtQuick custom widget for freq control would not be too hard to implement. But functionality takes priority now for me over ease of use.
If I will get some time maybe I will hack some sort of touch interface, because right now there is no other phone app out there doing Dstar DMR and Yaesu C4Fm like gqrx does.

cheets,
adrian yo8rzz

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[vk3...@gmail.com]

Just wondering if this has progressed recently (time always drags when you are impatient!)?

Also happy to help on the hardware side

Susan VK3ANZ

[Alexandru Csete]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 6:18 AM, <vk3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just wondering if this has progressed recently (time always drags when you
> are impatient!)?

For sure there has been a lot of progress, but I'm not sure what you
are expecting.

The next release, Gqrx 2.6, will be available as a binary package for
the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3. But there is a lot of work to be done and
this is a hobby project for me, so I can neither give you a firm
release date nor weekly progress reports. Sorry.

Alex

[vk3...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the information.

I'm not really expecting anything but there seemed to be frequent updates early on in this thread and then a long gap.

Susan

On Tuesday, September 20, 2016 at 4:46:17 AM UTC+10, Alexandru Csete wrote:

For sure there has been a lot of progress, but I'm not sure what you
are expecting.

Alex

[Alexandru Csete]

Well, I only made one announcement on Sep 5, so it must be some other
thread... Anyway, it's a work in progress and it's coming soon.

Alex

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[Stack Programer]

it's Great

[Robert Nickels]

H\ello all,

I've spent more time on the Airspy and SDR# side of the SDR world but with Alex's assistance I've been evaluating the pre-release version for Raspberry Pi 2 and 3.   In summary - it's great!  Congratulations to Alex for working through all the issues from last winter when I first started trying this on my own and ran into lots of barriers.    While the Pi 2 needs more help in the form of decimation to reduce the sample rate, the Pi 3 can handle high sample rates from either rtl dongle or Airspy at 2.5 or 3 msps with ease (typically not exceeding 40 to 70% CPU usage on each of the four cores).    That leaves lots of CPU left to do other things.    At the moment I'm listening to 75 meter SSB using an rtl dongle and RANVerter with 1.8 msps and decimation of 4 which still provides nearly the full band view (450 kHz) and is running only 150% utilization.  Good work, Alex!   The planned official release is going to advance the ability to create low-cost yet powerful SDR receivers using the Pi platform.

I can concur with Alex's statement about the code being stable.  I've had another instance running on a Pi 2 for over 5 days straight now without a hiccup.  And while I continue to find interesting reminders of how much Linux stuff I have either forgotten or have yet to learn,  I've yet to find any flaw or bugs that Alex isn't already aware of.

One thing I can add is that I've been running GQRX remotely via X windows and wi-fi to the Pi 3.   It's a little bit sluggish of course but still quite usable.   I really did it just for fun, but it turns out that running a full SDR GUI remotely is indeed practical.

73, Bob W9RAN

[Alexandru Csete]

Thank you Bob for the nice write-up of your experiences. I'm glad that
you had it running for several days. My own time and travel schedule
didn't allow me to test it for more than a few hours at a time.

All in all I have a good feeling about this and we are going ahead
with a planned release next week. For sure it is still experimental
but I think there is now a sufficient number of know-to-work
configurations to justify exposing more people to it :-)

Cheers
Alex

[geor...@gmail.com]

Is GQRX For Arm / Raspberry Pi coming out this week?

Is there a beta version available for testing now?

Thanks in advance

George

[Alexandru Csete]

Hi George,

> Is GQRX For Arm / Raspberry Pi coming out this week?

That's the plan and I am working on it. But you know, it's a hobby
project and I can only work few hours per day in the evenings.

Alex

[vk3...@gmail.com]

I'm running GQRX on my RPI 3 and it is working well.

Thank you - ity was well worth the wait.

Susan

[907h9879070g9790]

Hi dr op Alex.

This v2.6 works great on RPi2 with 1MS/dec 4 on lastest Raspian/Pixel. About 30 to 50 % cpu. Now I want to give it a try in combination with Fldigi and direct sampling mod RTL. But how to pipe audio from GQRX to Fldigi the right way?

Thx fer nfo.

M.

[David Ranch]

Check out this page..

   http://rockingdlabs.dunmire.org/exercises-experiments/quisk-and-fldigi

Replace "Quisk" for "Gqrx" and things should work ok.

--David
KI6ZHD

[Alexandru Csete]

Nope, this wont work because gqrx on RPI does not use Pulseaudio. The
reason for adding the Portaudio backend was actually to make gqrx work
on the RPI, so please do not install pulseaudio at all - it will ruin
performance on the RPI.

Instead, look into creating an ALSA loopback device. THe website is
down right now but her eis the link:
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Module-aloop

Alex

[907h9879070g9790]

Hi Alex.

Site is up agn. So I'll give it a try today.

[Michael Jackson]

Hi Alex et al,

I have to report that the GQRx for the RPi has enabled me to dispense with my power hungry desktop Windows PC for a small RPi3 that consumes less that a watt when idle compared to 26 watts of the idle desktop.

Thank you,

Michael