Help with raspberry pi setup please.

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ian_in_the_midlands
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2016 2:38 pm

Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by ian_in_the_midlands » Sat Jul 09, 2016 3:13 pm

Hello,
I am trying to setup an SDRplay to work through a raspberry pi 3. I want to then control it from a windows 10 PC running something like HDSDR in another room. I am getting nowhere.

I see this has been discussed before on here, and there is a thread from early June by fvdijke about this subject, but it seems to be using a RTL-2832U stick. I have tried following the steps, but keep encountering different problems (need for GNUradio, wrong GNUradio version etc).

My problem is that I do not know enough to start to investigate what I am doing wrong.

Looking elsewhere on the internet, I see references to many items of software: SoapySDR, GNUradio, osmocom, rtl-sdr, play_tcp, sdr-j etc.
Is there a simple beginners guide somewhere to define the best solution to what I am trying to do?
Should the raspberry pi do all of the number crunching, or is this done by the PC?

I really need a simple idiots step-by-step guide or An image for the raspberry pi 3 where someone has already done the hard work of building the correct versions of all dependencies.

Thanks.
Last edited by ian_in_the_midlands on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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rgood123
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2015 9:55 pm

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by rgood123 » Sat Jul 09, 2016 7:28 pm

Hi ian_in_the_midlands
Never own a raspi ,but take a look at this post may help (Frank Krippendork SDRPlayPorts )
http://sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic. ... orts#p2773
Last edited by rgood123 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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RichardG
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 5:19 pm

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by RichardG » Sun Jul 10, 2016 3:55 pm

The pi3 set is a little limited but here's one option that I've been pursuing, mainly on the Mac but will work on Linux and on Windows.

Install SoapySDR, SoapyRemote and SoapySDRPlay on the pi3. Make sure you have a new fresh install of Raspian otherwise there seems to be some issues with the USB and the RSP. You can then start the SoapyServer on the Pi3 and it will then make the RSP available on your network to any SoapySDR client.

I'd recommend that you then use CubicSDR to test everything out as this has SDRPlay built in by default.

You can also then use gnu-radio or gqrx by using the gr-osmosdr ensuring it has the SoapySDR interface build in. I have this working OK but I'll be honest and say everything seems to be a bit sensitive. You may have to build these yourself....

Running on the pi3 limits sampling to 1.5MHz though as there seems to be some bandwidth limitation as the USB buffer overflows very easily and the Ethernet speed is limited. If you haven't bought the Pi3 I would recommend having a look at something with a 1Gbit Ethernet which is not shared with the USB. Something like a Odroid C2 perhaps, although I haven't tried this. Only having 1.5Mhz BW is very limited, one of the main reasons I wanted the RSP was because of the 8MHz BW but that's currently not available when used with SoapySDR.

The challenge with the RSP is the proprietary driver code that mircs refused to open source or make available as a binary download, this prevents most open source software from supporting it out of the box since the driver is seen as none free. This means that you often have to build the software yourself or use some adaptor software like SoapySDR or EXTIO.

This will help.

http://sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic. ... ysdr#p2920
Last edited by RichardG on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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ian_in_the_midlands
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2016 2:38 pm

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by ian_in_the_midlands » Tue Jul 12, 2016 5:25 am

I now have it working with SoapySDR/SoapyRemote/SoapySDRPlay and CubicSDR. Thanks.
I wasn't aware of the speed limitation of the raspberry pi ports, but can see the packets getting lost.

Thanks for the help.
Last edited by ian_in_the_midlands on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
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hotpaw2
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2016 9:57 pm

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by hotpaw2 » Fri Aug 05, 2016 10:29 pm

I purchased a new SDRplay at HRO. It runs just fine on my Mac (OSX 10.11.6) using CubicSDR.app

I then plugged the SDRplay into my Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspian Jesse.
uname -a
shows:
"Linux raspberrypi 4.4.16-v7+ #899 SMP Thu Jul 28 12:40:33 BST 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux"
I installed libusb-1.0-0-dev on the Pi 3, and then ran SDRplay_RSP_MiricsAPI-RPi-1.95.2.run
Then I built play_sdr from this repository: https://github.com/krippendorf/SDRPlayPorts

But when I try the command:
./play_sdr -f 88500000 tmpFile
I get this error message from play_sdr:
Failed to start SDRplay RSP device.
Any ideas on what i should try to do to troubleshoot next on the Pi 3?

Thanks!
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RichardG
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 5:19 pm

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by RichardG » Sun Aug 07, 2016 8:17 am

I haven't tried this option as I saw the description saying
Incomplete!!! Actually not working yet ... Work in progress Prototype demo:
which put me off even trying....
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RichardG
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jun 11, 2016 5:19 pm

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by RichardG » Fri Aug 19, 2016 8:40 am

I have now tried this and it's very unreliable for me. 50% of the time it gives a
Failed to start SDRplay RSP device.
Other times it writes to disk OK.

I'm having similar problem with rx_power where it often fails to talk to the SDRPlay via SoapySDR, there's something not 100% with the SDRPlay on the Pi but I'm not quite sure what....
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jon
Posts: 433
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 10:48 am

Re: Help with raspberry pi setup please.

Post by jon » Mon Jun 19, 2017 6:21 am


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