Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Matlab interface to USRP

[Jeff Brower]

Greg-

>> I am trying to figure out the Matlab interface to USRP. Although I
>> could enable the communications between Matlab and GNU Radio, I am
>> wondering whether it is possible to make Matlab hook to USRP directly
>> without GNU radio. Thank you very much!
>
> (This isn't entirely directed at you - there has been discussion of
> proprietary software recently, and I know from private correspondence
> that several others share the views below.  Thus, I thought it helpful
> to air them.)
>
> <rms>My impression is that the charter of the list is to advance GNU
> Radio as a Free software implementation of SDR, within the context of a
> larger effort to have enough Free software so that we don't need to use
> any proprietary software.</>  Although I don't see this notion on the
> wiki, it's the normal notion for lists associated with official GNU
> projects of the FSF.
>
> If you're interested in using the USRP with proprietary software like
> Matlab, I would suggest also asking on some Matlab user's list.  I
> believe that a number of the more clueful people on this list are
> philosophically disinclined to volunteer to help people use proprietary
> software.

I understand completely your viewpoint.  However, let me point out that one of 
your key objectives should be to
increase popularity of GNU Radio software.  One way to do this is to encourage 
and support GNU Radio software examples
that interface with MATLAB in some way.

There is no denying that 1000s of developers are using MATLAB as a tool to 
develop radio and other RF applications. 
I'm active on MATLAB lists and forums, and besides commercial developers, I see 
literally 10s of student questions
about RF projects every day. OFDM, MIMO, xxSK, you name it... Professors have 
assigned them to do it.

If you can draw those developers and students (and Profs) into the GNU Radio 
environment and introduce them to what
you're doing, it will only serve to further your goals.  However distasteful 
from an ideological standpoint, I might
suggest to take a page from Bill Gates:  add low-level compatibility for 
"other" RF software to GNU Radio software
(typical examples such as transfer data, call MATLAB functions, MATLAB-callable 
functions), and eventually the
"others" will discover how much better, well-supported, and dynamically growing 
is your GNU Radio software.

-Jeff

> There has been some recent discussion about using Free software that has
> matlab-like features, like octave and freemat.
>
>   http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/
>   http://freemat.sourceforge.net/