8 ms·

GNU Radio is one of those examples of free software being hyper-niche yet super successful. It's something I want to start playing with in the near future. Anyo

GNU Radio is one of those examples of free software being hyper-niche yet super successful. It's something I want to start playing with in the near future. Anyone got any advice on where to start?

Stratoscope 7y ago
I don't know the specifics of GNU Radio, but if you want to transmit, start by getting your amateur radio license. In the US, you should be able to get your Technician license with a half day of study and a quick test. Here's one good place to get started: https://hamstudy.org/ https://hamstudy.org/
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  IME getting a license is not really that valuable unless you care about phone or CW. Also, if you do get a license, register it to a PO box.
  - sciurus 7y ago
    You need a license to transmit in the digital portions of the amateur bands as well.
    - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
      True, but there are a ton of cool things you can do just in ISM. And depending on where you are, your local repeater may not be the most welcoming place, especially if you're not the typical middle age white male.
      - ac29 7y ago
        Depends what you're looking to do. ISM bands are limited to 1W transmit power, and the lowest frequency band with more than a few kHz available in the US is the 902-928 band. High frequency and low power combined tend to mean relatively short range. That being said, I work with 900MHz radio for a living (among other bands), and you can get impressive results in the 1-20 mile range with the right technology and infrastructure. A $10 ham license opens up a significant amount of bandwidth, and power up to 1500W.
  - kawfey 7y ago
    It's valuable if you care about transmitting. Sure you can transmit under part 15 or other unlicensed transmission rules, but you have to maintain extremely low power that is typically not very useful for communication. On PO Boxes, I don't think it does much to thwart a person looking for your address. It's one single barrier, but anyone can find anyone's legal mailing address via whitepages/public record using only a name and location.
drmpeg 7y ago
Here's a very good tutorial series. It's targeted at hackRF, but has plenty of general info. https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/ https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/
- icholy 7y ago
  I wish there were more :(
- ztetranz 7y ago
  I'm working through his lessons. They're very good. I don't have a HackRF but I managed to get the "Hello World" flow, i.e., listen to FM broadcast radio going nicely with a cheap RTL-SDR by following lesson 1, but changing the sample rate. The version of GNU Radio in the Ubuntu apt-get repos for 18.04 is fairly recent but the GQRX project has a PPA which includes GNU Radio which will hopefully be updated more frequently. With default Ubuntu I had problems with the WX slider not moving. I didn't realize that WX widgets are old and the advice is to use QT. WX is removed in this latest version. FWIW, I've since switched to Kubuntu on the same hardware and all widgets work well including WX but I have followed advice and now use QT. The sound sink seems to work better if you bypass PulseAudio. Give the sink a device name, probably hw. I'm eagerly waiting for one of these that I preordered. https://airspy.com/airspy-hf-discovery/ https://airspy.com/airspy-hf-discovery/ I don't have it yet so I can't swear by it but every report from those who have one seems to be very good if you want a general purpose receiver. It covers 0.5 kHz (yes 500 Hz) to 31 MHz and 60 to 260 MHz so not as wide as some but ... I'm mostly interested in HF so plenty wide enough for me.
unixhero 7y ago
Another is KiCad.
rhinoceraptor 7y ago
It's also recommended to use Pentoo Linux, much of the open source SDR software out there is tricky to get set up. I'd grab an RTL-SDR, a thumb drive with Pentoo, and then you can play around in the live environment very easily.

GNU Radio is one of those examples of free software being hyper-niche yet super successful. It's something I want to start playing with in the near future. Anyone got any advice on where to start?

Stratoscope 7y ago

I don't know the specifics of GNU Radio, but if you want to transmit, start by getting your amateur radio license. In the US, you should be able to get your Technician license with a half day of study and a quick test. Here's one good place to get started: https://hamstudy.org/ https://hamstudy.org/

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
IME getting a license is not really that valuable unless you care about phone or CW. Also, if you do get a license, register it to a PO box.
- sciurus 7y ago
  You need a license to transmit in the digital portions of the amateur bands as well.
  - rhinoceraptor 7y ago
    True, but there are a ton of cool things you can do just in ISM. And depending on where you are, your local repeater may not be the most welcoming place, especially if you're not the typical middle age white male.
    - ac29 7y ago
      Depends what you're looking to do. ISM bands are limited to 1W transmit power, and the lowest frequency band with more than a few kHz available in the US is the 902-928 band. High frequency and low power combined tend to mean relatively short range. That being said, I work with 900MHz radio for a living (among other bands), and you can get impressive results in the 1-20 mile range with the right technology and infrastructure. A $10 ham license opens up a significant amount of bandwidth, and power up to 1500W.
- kawfey 7y ago
  It's valuable if you care about transmitting. Sure you can transmit under part 15 or other unlicensed transmission rules, but you have to maintain extremely low power that is typically not very useful for communication. On PO Boxes, I don't think it does much to thwart a person looking for your address. It's one single barrier, but anyone can find anyone's legal mailing address via whitepages/public record using only a name and location.

drmpeg 7y ago

Here's a very good tutorial series. It's targeted at hackRF, but has plenty of general info. https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/ https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/

icholy 7y ago
I wish there were more :(
ztetranz 7y ago
I'm working through his lessons. They're very good. I don't have a HackRF but I managed to get the "Hello World" flow, i.e., listen to FM broadcast radio going nicely with a cheap RTL-SDR by following lesson 1, but changing the sample rate. The version of GNU Radio in the Ubuntu apt-get repos for 18.04 is fairly recent but the GQRX project has a PPA which includes GNU Radio which will hopefully be updated more frequently. With default Ubuntu I had problems with the WX slider not moving. I didn't realize that WX widgets are old and the advice is to use QT. WX is removed in this latest version. FWIW, I've since switched to Kubuntu on the same hardware and all widgets work well including WX but I have followed advice and now use QT. The sound sink seems to work better if you bypass PulseAudio. Give the sink a device name, probably hw. I'm eagerly waiting for one of these that I preordered. https://airspy.com/airspy-hf-discovery/ https://airspy.com/airspy-hf-discovery/ I don't have it yet so I can't swear by it but every report from those who have one seems to be very good if you want a general purpose receiver. It covers 0.5 kHz (yes 500 Hz) to 31 MHz and 60 to 260 MHz so not as wide as some but ... I'm mostly interested in HF so plenty wide enough for me.

unixhero 7y ago

Another is KiCad.

rhinoceraptor 7y ago

It's also recommended to use Pentoo Linux, much of the open source SDR software out there is tricky to get set up. I'd grab an RTL-SDR, a thumb drive with Pentoo, and then you can play around in the live environment very easily.