[Discuss-gnuradio] GNU radio: where to start?

[Mario Rossi]

Hi,

I've discovered this project yesterday, while looking for Linux driver
for a DRM receiver.

GNUradio looks very interesting, but I haven't found too much
documentation for very beginners (I'm not en engineer, and I've
problems understanding many things behind radio and frequencies).

This is what I've understood:

1) Hardware: we need some magic box to tune some given frequency (e.g.
100 MHz) and downconvert a bandwitdth of about 20kHz around that
frequency in order to pass it to the input of the sound card (which
working at 48kHz can only sample 0 to 24 kHz).

2) Software: the signal is then sent through all nodes of GNUradio
which performs all sort of decoding, (AM, FM, DRM, DVB etc...) and
(possibly) generating a signal ready to be played to the PC's
speakers.

It looks to me a great idea! Having one single receiver useful for all
sort of signals! Instead of chasing all new standards of digital and
analogue broadcast!

But it looks too good to be true, since I haven't understood whether
such a receiver exists. It looks one has to assemble it personally,
but then again I have no idea of how to do it. And would it be good
for all frequencies? What is a reasonable range for a single device?

Another question: the project http://drm.sourceforge.net looks to be a
subset of GNUradio, decoding only DRM.
There as well a receiver is needed. Unfortunaltely I cannot understand
whether the same sort of device is required for DRM and GNUradio. Has
anybody seen it?

Sorry for the many questions. But it seems to be a whole new world to me.

Thanks