Yes I did note in the Beagleboard chat that Koen had done Hamlib but was not able to locate it anywhere. How do I access and use that? Am I correct in my understanding that. like gnuradio, Hamlib is also a series of modules which FLdigi and perhaps other applications use as a base? Have you heard of Linrad? It relies on NASM and SVGA in one version but it's cousin Xlinrad uses X11 as the visual "cortex" so to speak as as such appears to have fewer dependencies and could be, perhaps a more stable platform. Might that be a possibility?
That leads me to think it would be good to have a comparison of the various dependencies and route-to-implementation vectors to actually identify which of the 15-20 ham radio/SDR programs is the nearest likely candidate but to do that I would have to know much more about the toolchain itself and the that may be beyond the current time frame of my project. But later, if I can I'd like to research that. A lot of work has been done by many independent parties and it need to be put in perspective and thoroughly analyzed.
To that end, although I am not that familiar with the build/compile side of Linux, I have done my share of installing multiple utilities on various Linux distributions and their vagaries. I am mainly focused on application development using Perl, PHP, postgresql, mysql and Ruby-on-Rails etc. I would, however, like to learn enough to make my work productive and perhaps contribute something if only to test the builds done by others. To do this I will need a bit more background as to the terminology and structure of OE. I just read one of your papers on the OSSIE/OMAP platform and that was helpful to see some of that terminology explained. I think that was already several years old, so if I had a more up to date source that would be great.
BTW - are you still here in VA? I'm in Richmond. Maybe we could have you come down and give a talk on OE and your related work, to the Linux users groups here in a combined meeting of sorts.
Let me know about Hamlib as I would like to see if I can get that working and practice doing some build/function tests on both Angstrom and the Ubuntu distro that I have running on the Beagleboard.
Regards,
Robert Bruce Thomas, B.I.D.
Industrial Designer
Technology Integration Specialist
Richmond, Virginia, 23229
804.833.4470
http://www.klikhome.com
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Fwd: gnuradio and beagleboard <--distros?
From: Philip Balister <phi...@balister.org>
Date: Mon, June 01, 2009 10:16 am
To: beagle-sdr@opensdr.com
Rob wrote:
> Philip,
>
> What distribution does your work revolve around? I have been back and forth
> trying to compile (or just install) various SDR applications on both Angstrom
> and Ubuntu. I have tried using OE, bitbake and that methodology, to little
> availe. Also I have tried to install FLdigi which should run very well but
> depends on Hamlib which, in turn is dependant on gcc which I now realize has its
> own series of problems. So that may not be an ultumate route to take. Also, I
> have many of them running perfectly in Ubuntu on my Intel box so how hard would
> it be to get them to run on the Beagleboard if that is the case?
Angstrom :) It takes some practice, but once you get OE building
Angstrom, life is much easier.
> Koen Kooi seems to maintain that most SDR software including Gnuradio will not
> run efficiently on anything but Angstrom on the Beaglebord. Looking a the face
> of it I am inclined to agree but also am reserving judgment since his work with
> Angstrom may make him less than objective! :)
Not all the distros are compiling for the armv7 instruction set
available on the beagle.
> Also concerning Gnuradio, it appears to be a series of modules that one can put
> together to have an operating radio but does not, as far I I have seen, do any
> kind of translation from the various modes (PSK, CW, RTTY, etc.) back into text
> that is the norm for Digital Packet communications, at least insofar as we hams
> look at it. Are there any provisions for such? Has anyone done any work in that
> area that I am just not aware of? Thanks for your guidance and assistance.
I'm not aware of much amateur radio specific stuff on GNU Radio.
I'd like to get the existing amateur stuff running on the Beagle, but it
is yet another background task for me. Koen added hamlib to OE the other
day. I think fldigi had some issues that were going to need more
attention. Once something from the x86 world is built on the OMAP3,
there is likely some work to do on the actual signal processing code.
Philip
> Regards
>
> Robert Thomas, KC4NYK
> Public Information Officer
> Richmond Amateur Radio Club
> Richmond, VA 23229
> 804.833.4470
> http://www.rarcpio.net
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Fwd: gnuradio and beagleboard
> From: Philip Balister <phi...@balister.org>
> Date: Sun, May 31, 2009 2:08 pm
> To: beagle-sdr@opensdr.com
>
> anne kwong wrote:
> > Hi Philip,
> >
> > I also have an old Beagleboard. In this case, I am more inclined to buy an
> > Overo Air which also has OMAP 3530. Would you mind to kindly send out the
> > step-by-step procedure on how to get gnuradio workong in Overo? It would be
> > a great help for me.
> >
> > I am eager to try it out and I am begining to test out getting some sample
> > programs running with OE.
>
> My current goal is to have some way to build GNU Radio that is better
> than the current process by Friday, and update the OE default to
> gnuradio-3.2. This will include USRP1 support and basic NEON support.
>
> This should work on the Beagle and Overo boards.
>
> This should make things much easier for people.
>
> Philip
>
>
> >
> > Thanks alot.
> >
> > Anne
> >
> > On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 10:41 PM, Philip Balister <phi...@opensdr.com>wrote:
> >
> > > anne kwong wrote:
> > >
> > >> Hi
> > >>
> > >> I want to run usrp, gnuradio using beagleboard. In addition, I hope to
> > >> leverage on the TI dsp chip.
> > >>
> > >> Has anyone done that and can show me how to do that?
> > >>
> > > Yes :) (Well, the USRP test was done with a Gumstix Overo since I have an
> > > old Beagle)
> > >
> > > To use the USRP1, you will need a rev C Beagle (has working EHCI port). I
> > > haven't tried the musb port.
> > >
> > > To get a working build with the usrp, you will need to know your way around
> > > OE a bit. (I'm sure you could build GNU Radio without OE, but building the
> > > needed libraries might drive you crazy).
> > >
> > > The trickiest part at the moment is you need to patch OE to build libusb,
> > > not libusb-compat. We are sort of working on building a static version of
> > > libusb and using that for OE, but that is going slowly.
> > >
> > > Building the _svn recipe will apply a patch that lets the fir fff filter
> > > use NEON instructions. This improves performance a lot. Lot's more code
> > > needs optimizing for NEON. The current GCC versions do not do a good job of
> > > generating math code for the armv7.
> > >
> > > In summary, if you can find your way around OE a little, it is easy to get
> > > to where you want to be :) I want to get th 3.2 release in OE, with the
> > > static libusb so we have a stable gnuradio build that works with the USRP,
> > > but this is going to take some time (I've got several other things going on
> > > at the moment, and the libusb issue is holding me up)
> > >
> > > I've built and run the dsplink demos using the ti-codec engine recipe in
> > > OE. The examples run. Unfortunately, the examples are hard to follow in the
> > > source since the build system is closely coupled with the codec engine build
> > > system. This makes it tricky to extract a simple example we can base a GNU
> > > radio block on. I've heard someone is working on a simple example though.
> > >
> > > Philip
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >> Thank you so much for all your help.
> > >>
> > >> Anne
> > >>
> > >> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > >> From: Philip Balister <phi...@balister.org>
> > >> Date: Sat, May 16, 2009 at 11:46 PM
> > >> Subject: Re: gnuradio and beagleboard
> > >> To: beagle-sdr@opensdr.com
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> anne kwong wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hi Philip,
> > >>> That would be great. I would like to use Beagle board to obtain AM/FM
> > >>> signal and play it.
> > >>>
> > >>>
> > >> bitbake gnuradio will produce binaries that run. The USRP binaries do not
> > >> run because there is a failed attempt to make the usrp work with
> > >> libusb-compat in there. Basically, I need to remove the patch and disable
> > >> the usrp build.
> > >>
> > >> If you look at the gnuradio_svn recipe, there is an example of using the
> > >> NEON coprocessor in one of the FIR filters. I have also built the usrp
> > >> code
> > >> by using a patch to OE that switched the build to use libusb-0.12. I'll
> > >> find
> > >> that patch and post it here.
> > >>
> > >> Btw, are you doing anything to utilize the DSP chip in the beagleboard?
> > >>
> > >> You can build the ti-codec-engine recipe in OE (you will need to read the
> > >> recipe carefully to see how to install all the TI stuff). I have run the
> > >> dsplink examples. I haven't tried the code engine stuff.
> > >>
> > >> Basically, lots of stuff does work, but you need to be pretty motivated to
> > >> work with it :)
> > >>
> > >> Philip
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> I would love to give it a try whenever your stuff is ready.
> > >>
> > >>> Thank you so much.
> > >>>
> > >>> Thanks,
> > >>> Anne
> > >>>
> > >>> On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Philip Balister <phi...@opensdr.com>
> > >>> wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> Anne kwong wrote:
> > >>>> Hi,
> > >>>>> I am trying to have gnuradio running on beagleboard. Does anyone know
> > >>>>> how to do it or is there any how-to or document out there that can
> > >>>>> guide me a bit?
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
> > >>>>>
> > >>>>> There is some very basic support in Angstrom/OE. I have some patches
> > >>>> that
> > >>>> start to exploit the NEON coprocessor also.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> I'll start posting stuff here. I also need to start moving OMAP3 support
> > >>>> into GNU Radio. I need to work out how to deal with the autofoo first :)
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Philip
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> > >>>>
> >
