VirtualBox + Backtrack 5 + Gnu Radio + RTL2832

[tcm3105]

I want create in GNU Radio reader for my remote temperature sensors.

I search linux developers who can create VirtualBox drive contains Gnu Radio software and RTL2832.
Many developers can create new module in Gnu Radio software but can't create working Linux distribution.


My proposition is: Create VirtualBox drive contains Liux Backtrack 5 and add last version of Gnu Radio software + all software for RTL2832 dongle.

In my opinion http://www.backtrack-linux.org/ is very good for this project.

I can share webserver space for resouce and repository.


Please look at this older different project: Ubuntu + Gnu Radio as Oracle VM VirtualBox is here: link ... maybe in first time add new version of GNU Radio + all Patches and RTL2832 modules/componets for this project?


Sorry for poor English.
Greetings from Poland.

Grzegorz
Tcm...@o2.pl

[Adam Nielsen]

> Many developers can create new module in Gnu Radio software but can't create
> working Linux distribution.

Creating a working Linux distribution is quite easy. You can boot one and run
it entirely off a USB stick, which means you can move it between computers
very easily without affecting the main OS on that computer.

> My proposition is: *Create VirtualBox drive contains Liux Backtrack 5 and add
> last version of Gnu Radio software + all software for RTL2832 dongle*.

There are two big drawbacks to this method:

1. GNU Radio needs a lot of CPU power. Running it inside a virtual machine
cuts your CPU power down considerably, so you wouldn't be able to design very
complex flow graphs.

2. USB support inside VirtualBox isn't great. I tried this (the opposite
way, so I could run HDSDR under Linux) and there's not enough bandwidth
available in the VM to stream data from the RTL2832 in real time - lots of
dropped packets.

I think it would be much easier and more reliable if someone were to create a
native Windows distribution of GNU Radio. Then Windows users can use the
tools they are familiar with. (Not that I'm volunteering for this, as I don't
run Windows.)

Cheers,
Adam.

[tcm3105]

In my computer (Win 7, Intel i5 2.8 GHz, 4 GB ram) Virtual Box + Ubuntu + Gnu Radio  samples applications working excelent -  komputer speed is no problem.

I donot have read data fromu usb dongle attached to Virtual Box.

Idea is:
Plug RTL dongle, run in Windows BorIP software, start Virtual Box + Bactrack and run Gnu Radio.
Windows: RTL dongle -> zadig.exe (driver for grab data from dongle) -> BorIP.exe (send pacet via lan/internet) -> Virtual Box: Gnu Radio (get from BorIP lan/internet stream)

Windows software its no problem for me (it's working).
Problem for me is linux side. (im not Linux developer)


If you sey - it easy .... please show me how install Gnu Radio in Virtual Box + Bactrack.
Or easy way .... please create Virtual Box drive ready to run Gnu Radio, and share it :-)


Virtual Box drive must be easy for implementation - one click to run in developer mode ... maximum developer Gnu Radio frendly :-)

Grzegorz

[Ton Machielsen]

Better solution is to have a distribution like Ubuntu on an external USB drive/stick and install everything there. Full Linux power and if you need to go back to Windows, unplug the USB and reboot.

Ton.

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[JP]

Wow, cool idea. I was planning on doing something else (once my USB stick arrived):

VirtualBox allows you to pass USB devices directly to the guest OS (Click on Devices->USB Devices and then click on the device you want to forward to the guest OS). So, I was planning on forwarding the RTL2832 USB key directly to Ubuntu and using the RTL2832 source directly from within GRC.

I'm not sure which approach is 'better'. I'll know in about a week :)

JP

[Adam Nielsen]

> VirtualBox allows you to pass USB devices directly to the guest OS (Click on
> Devices->USB Devices and then click on the device you want to forward to the
> guest OS). So, I was planning on forwarding the RTL2832 USB key directly to
> Ubuntu and using the RTL2832 source directly from within GRC.
>
> I'm not sure which approach is 'better'. I'll know in about a week :)

I tried this (the other way, passing the USB stick from a Linux host to a
Windows guest) and it didn't work very well. The output stuttered a lot. I
don't think this was a CPU power thing, because using a capture file worked fine.

I thought VirtualBox only allowed passthrough of USB 1.1 devices (which would
explain it because of USB1.1's reduced bandwidth), but it seems the closed
source edition does support USB2.0 passthrough, so I'm not sure what the
problem is. It would be interesting to find out whether anyone else is able
to get it working.

Cheers,
Adam.

[tcm3105]

This is it: Embedded rtl-sdr :-)

[JP]

On Tuesday, May 1, 2012 3:20:12 PM UTC-5, Adam Nielsen wrote:

I thought VirtualBox only allowed passthrough of USB 1.1 devices (which would
explain it because of USB1.1's reduced bandwidth), but it seems the closed
source edition does support USB2.0 passthrough, so I'm not sure what the
problem is.  It would be interesting to find out whether anyone else is able
to get it working.

FWIW, I did manage to get my stick to work, via USB, with an Ubuntu Virtualbox guest running on a Win7 host without any problems. Was much more difficult to get it running w/ HDSDR.

Using GRC, OsmoSDR connected directly to an FFT waterfall uses 8% of my host CPU (i7-920) and 30% of the guest CPU (I only assigned one core to the client OS). Sample rate was 2 MSPS.

Haven't done anything more complex yet :)

JP

[JP]

On Friday, May 18, 2012 9:07:08 AM UTC-5, JP wrote:

FWIW, I did manage to get my stick to work, via USB, with an Ubuntu Virtualbox guest running on a Win7 host without any problems. Was much more difficult to get it running w/ HDSDR.

Using GRC, OsmoSDR connected directly to an FFT waterfall uses 8% of my host CPU (i7-920) and 30% of the guest CPU (I only assigned one core to the client OS). Sample rate was 2 MSPS.

Haven't done anything more complex yet :)

JP

As a further followup, I recently had time to actually capture some data and process it. This is for a dongle connected to a windows machine hosting a Virtualbox VM running Ubuntu/GnuRadio. The dongle was routed directly to GR by telling VirtualBox to take control of the dongle. Unfortunately, data is getting dropped 'somewhere' in the chain. GR did not indicate any buffer overruns but upon analyzing the captured data, I can see that I'm losing about 10% of the samples.

Without changing anything hardware-wise, I ran the rtl_sdr commandline capture program on the Windows host (http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr) and was able to capture the data I wanted without any overruns.

JP

P.S. The sampling rate I was targeting was 1.96MSPS.

[henry zuckerman]

Here''s what I did for a portable gnuradio/RTLSDR setup:

1. Installed/set up Linux Mint 12 (KDE) on an old HD - spare machine.
2. Installed gnuradio & accessories (rtl-sdr/gr-osmosdr/gr-baz) via the buildgnuradio script.  (No problem on Mint 12/Ubuntu 12.04 or Fedora 17, BTW.)
3. Used remastersys (www.remastersys.com) to build a bootable live iso from my install,
4. Used Unetbootin to flash the iso to a USB stick, including a 1 gig writeable overlay.

Works great, even on my old machine, which is a 3.2 Ghz/uniprocessor/1 gig memory.  Seems to be able to handle USB I/O for both the OS stick and the RTL dongle, no problem.  Haven't tried it on my eeePC netbook, though - would likely be a disaster.