Conversion of Gnu Radio projects to Pothos

[Mehtap özkan]

Hi All,

 I have completed a quite comprehensive modem workflow in GRC/ Linux and LimeSDR.(No OOT blocks are used)

I want to use it in Windows but Gnu Radio in Windows is painfull.

Can I convert the entire project to Pothos?

I also wonder if I will get a speed improvement if I use some Pothos blocks instead of Gnu Radio blocks.

Thank you in advance.

[Josh Blum]

On 07/06/2017 10:31 AM, Mehtap özkan wrote:
> Hi All,
> I have completed a quite comprehensive modem workflow in GRC/ Linux and
> LimeSDR.(No OOT blocks are used)
> I want to use it in Windows but Gnu Radio in Windows is painfull.
> Can I convert the entire project to Pothos?

Hi Mehtap,

There is probably no easy answer to this.

1) Compiling gnuradio OOT projects is certainly possible, and you should
be able to compile it against the PothosSDR windows installer with some
additional development files installed. I tried to document this here:
https://github.com/pothosware/PothosSDR/wiki/GNURadio#developing-blocks
Its possible, but not trivial; you have to specify a lot of specific
paths to development files in the cmake config and maybe resolve certain
compiler differences.

2) While there isnt a converter tool from save a saved .grc to a .pothos
(would be xml -> JSON). This tool could be made and probably work in an
automated fashion. Basically adapting the blocks and connections, and
then translating GUI widgets and variable controls to their pothos
equivalent. Ifs its already a python script, theres probably not really
a good way other than by hand.

3) Or maybe you would rewrite the modem blocks as pothos blocks if they
are C++. Blocks are similar with ports, functions, and work routines, it
might mostly be the same code with some differences to how you access
buffer pointers.
https://github.com/pothosware/pothos/wiki/BlocksCodingGuide But even
this is going to require cmake and some compiling

I just wanted to make some suggestions, but you probably have some
tedious work ahead of you no matter how you do it. :-)

> I also wonder if I will get a speed improvement if I use some Pothos blocks
> instead of Gnu Radio blocks.
> Thank you in advance.
>

Same again, its not easy to say what is going to be faster or better.
And some things will need optimization, while others dont. As a matter
of fact Pothos can use gnuradio blocks because in many cases they are
quite nice, or even performance optimized. This is why full gnuradio and
gr-pothos is also bundled with the PothosSDR windows installer. There is
also a toolkit for Liquid DSP blocks, although not in the installer yet,
LiquidDSP is another good library of performance optimized dsp
operations. Honestly, I just wanted to make frameworks and tools, not
focused on the blocks themselves because there's already good libraries
out there. Besides many people need to write custom processing like
yourself.

I'm sorry if that wasn't very helpful,
but best of luck,

-josh