[Discuss-gnuradio] Question UHD, WINDOWS

[Florian Eugen]

Hi mr. Josh,

 

   thank you very much for answering to my questions. It's good to know that somebody started to think to those people who are using Windows OS. I want you to know that I'm used to other types of development like microcontrollers, FPGA's, different communications RS232, RS485, SPI, I2C, and many others different from this GNU Radio stuff, but even if I read many things about GNU Radio it's hard to understand how it's working, especially when I had so many problems while trying to install it on Windows and to tell you the truth I have my USRP for about a year and no success to try it on Win OS.

 

   After heaving so many problems with the installation part I decided to use something else, and I thought I would use some DLL found on Tools4SDR, but it turned out it doesn't has any support for new daughterboards like WBX, than it came up the idea to make my own program to control USRP, but maybe that's not such a good idea so I tend to accept that I will have to use UHD, GNU Radio (in a certain way) and a compiler to make my program and bound all these together. What I downloaded here http://www.joshknows.com/download/gnuradio_port/, looks better (UHD is what I need - something that I can use to control USRP),  I only have to understand how to use it with my application, I wouldn't like to use it with python.

 

   OK, so there's the USRP, it needs the rbf file containing the logic for the FPGA, how it has to work. Usually I program my FPGA boards with a JTAG programmer, but here is a nice USB transceiver, that is the first problem, to understand how it works, and how is GNU Radio driving it. As I understand the 8051 microcontroller is already programmed (This is why I get the correct FFFE VID and 0002 PID when heaving the USRP connected to the PC and Win driver installed). There's many source code related to the USB transceiver in many different files and as I saw it's quite difficult to use all that. When is the rbf file written to the FPGA (I suppose that only once at the beginning), but where, I checked an example code for USRP, the "usrp_spectrum_sense.py" file and I can't get the picture where is told what and when to write to the FPGA? Anyway as I checked out that python code, regarding the fact that I'm used to the well structured pascal code, this is a mess, I already dislike python, but if I will have to use it, I think I don't have any other choice.

 

   OK, so let's suppose that the rbf file is written to the FPGA through that USB transceiver. I run a python code and I get some results like a nice plot, representing some values coming as a stream from the FPGA. I checked the "usrp_spectrum_sense.py" example python code for USRP, WOW, it's really a mess (C source code it's not as well structured code as Pascal, but Python is very ugly compared to C, maybe because I'm not used to it therefore I'm sure that you don't agree with me ), I don't want to plot anything anywhere (maybe only time to time when trying out new things and I want to see what I do receive), only to get some data that might arrive at a certain frequency, after that I will make the whole demodulation, and others (in pure Pascal, or maybe using some components from Delphi, FreePascal). I saw that GNU Radio has many functions written that might help in certain conditions (OFDM, Trellis, audio, video, etc.), that's very good, but I'm searching a way to integrate all that into my application.

 

   What I need: my software will be run on a computer (Core2Duo processor at 2 GHz) with an embedded OS (WIN or Linux), therefore my application will be able to make many calculations, modulation, demodulation, set USRP parameters very fast, and so on. The software will be able to get some data from outside with the help of the USRP and send some data to different modules (maybe some data, at a very low data rate transfer, on 433 MHz ISM band, while using some Manchester coding with my OOK- ON-OFF Keying transceiver - I will use a scripting language (not python) like C or Pascal where I will tell USRP what to do - set frequency to a value, set decimation, form a certain package from various data and so on), so I want to get out from the I and Q data received from USRP a digital value 1000101110. OK, let's suppose that I would use Python, how would I transfer data to my application (without saving data to file and read it back from my application)? In a few words: it will be a real application, not ploting signals and other stuff. For example as I understand, it's possible to receive data from two sources (two different frequencies) heaving the same data rate transfer, WOW, it would be quite nice.

 

   How I imagined it to work: here is the UHD, with many functions to help read and set data from/to USRP. I connect from my application to the UHD.dll and start to use those functions from the dll file. Connect to the gnuradio-core.dll, and make some signal processing (give raw data received from FPGA through USB and get values). Anyway I think I missunderstood GNU Radio workig methode. I'm trying to understand and to figure out how could I integrate all you have done in GNU Radio into my application, and use it efficiently.

 

   Could you give me some ideas. I would appriciate any advice, you and others might give me. I know that I look like a stupid person, but all that information regarding UHD, USRP, GNU radio is messed up in my head and it needs some answers to put each piece where it belongs to.

 

   Thank you very much. Please excuse me for bothering you with my questions, but I really need somebody like you to give me a few answers that I hope will help me to understand how does it work.

 

 

I wish everybody a very nice day.

 

Best regards,

Florian Eugen.

---

From: Josh Blum <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Sent: Wed, February 16, 2011 8:25:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Question UHD, WINDOWS


>    As I mentioned a few times here, I really can't install that GNU Radio in
> Windows environment (I followed all steps found in those descriptions regarding,
> how to install it with MinGW or CygWin). So I have to give it up and try to

I'm posting a uhd, gnuradio, and misc dependencies installer. Make sure
to set your PATH to the installed library dirs. The other pre-reqs come
with installers you can get from the internet and maybe I will upload
them later (python, numpy, pyqt, pygtk, etc...)

http://www.joshknows.com/download/gnuradio_port/

> focuse on other solutions like UHD or maybe others. What I want to do is to make
> some simple data transfers on different frequencies, basic communication with
> some modules made by me. Really I don't need all that python stuff and all those
> dependencies problems. I was even thinking to control USRP from my application,
> it would be much faster than using Python, but how to write the firmware into

The performance overhead of python is irrelevant because its not used in
the fast path. However, the developer overhead is. :-)

> the FPGA. OK, I got it, through that nice USB transceiver. After installing the
> USB driver when the USRP1 is connected to the PC it shows up the device with
> that FFFE VID and 0002 PID. Could anybody tell me what to do from this point to
> be able to program the firmware into the FPGA or maybe to change the firmware of
> the EZ-USB FX2 transceiver? I suppose after I will program the rbf file into the

See <uhd-repo>/host/lib/usrp/usrp1/usrp1_ctrl.cpp

> FPGA I could start to get and set things, send orders to the board to set
> frequency, decimation, sampling rate or read/write raw data. Commands to drive
> the USRP1 and my WBX daughterboard I could get from written source code (ex:
> http://gnuradio.org/redmine/repositories/entry/gnuradio/usrp/host/lib/db_wbxng.cc),
>  anyway I'll start to make the whole program with the help of FreePascal.
>

Lol ok

>  A second alternative would be to use UHD (documentation is very poor) because

Ok, whats missing for you?

> it has support for USRP1, but after I read that I would have to get I don't know
> what program to do something with the source code and to compile the UHD source
> code and other steps I started to think if it's a good idea, maybe I will have

http://www.ettus.com/uhd_docs/manual/html/build.html

> the same problems encountered when installing GNU Radio on Windows OS, why
> couldn't they provide a simple DLL file for using it on all Win OS's. Could

They can

> anybody tell me how does UHD behave in Win OS? It's easy to use it?
>

Its functionally identical under windows

>
> As a final answer, based on my description I do expect too much from this
> USRP1+WBX hardware or there are other people heaving the same problems?
>

Whats the problem?

_josh

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