Re: Gnuradio 3.8 on a Raspberry pi 4 B?

There is some middle ground. On my Beagleboard X-15, I use a stripped
down console only version of Ubuntu 18.04 and ssh (with X11 forwarding)
in from another host. Kernel support is awesome with 4.14, 4.19 and 5.4
available along with real-time compiled versions.

I've been using a Samsung EVO 128 GB microSD card for a year and half
now with no problems. For 32-bit testing, I've compiled GNU Radio many
many (100's ?) times on that card.

I was disappointed to see that the Digital Television component was
missing on the buildroot version of GNU Radio. The X-15 is (just barely)
capable of running the DVB-T2 transmitter at 5 MHz bandwidth, which I
consider phenomenal. A RPi4 should do a little better.

Ron

On 5/29/20 08:07, jean-michel.friedt@femto-st.fr wrote:
> apologies to the list then, I was not aware of the use of RPi as
> desktop computer, and have always been obsessed with optimization
> of resources for embedded systems. Most probably for a desktop use,
> a sub-optimal binary distribution such as Raspbian is best suited indeed,
> as we find daily on our personal computers.
>
> JM
>
> --
> JM Friedt, FEMTO-ST Time & Frequency/SENSeOR, 26 rue de l'Epitaphe,
> 25000 Besancon, France
>
> May 29, 2020 4:56 PM, "Glen Langston" <glen.i.langston@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your explanation.
>>
>> ssh-ing in as root did work fine.
>>
>> I find that the rtl_ programs do work, like rtl_fm.
>>
>> I also understand your approach to embedded real-time applications.
>>
>> This probably works particularly well for the PlutoSDR.
>>
>> My goal is for student use, where they are particularly graphical
>> user interface aware.
>>
>> Best regards
>>
>> Glen
>>
>>> On May 29, 2020, at 1:57 AM, jean-michel.friedt@femto-st.fr wrote:
>>>
>>> It is indeed my belief that there is no point in running a graphical user
>>> interface on an embedded system, much less a windowing system. If an embedded
>>> board is supposed to interact with a user, a Qt5 or SDL dedicated interface
>>> will be much lighter and efficient than a X-Window server and a window manager
>>> client.
>>>
>>> This is the reason for providing the examples at the end of the tutorial
>>> where a Non GUI flowgraph is generated, the resulting Python script sent to
>>> the embedded board and running there, possibly streaming the output (in my
>>> example 0-MQ) to a client. In the case of gr-acars, I just fetch periodically
>>> the log-file from the RPi4 to the host computer for analysis.
>>>
>>> Nevertheless if you want to go in the windowing system direction, Buildroot
>>> seems to provide Xorg support:
>>>
>>> make menuconfig
>>> Target packages -> Graphic libraries and applications -> X.org X Window System
>>>
>>> I have never used nor tested, so I have no idea how much space/how long it takes
>>> to compile.
>>>
>>> There is no binary package management system with buildroot: the whole point, which
>>> makes is different from OpenEmbedded/Yocto, is to generate a custom minimal
>>> image with only the needed tools and not compile all possible binary packages
>>> (the disk size difference being about 10-fold, with about 8 GB needed for
>>> buildroot when my attempt at completing the OpenEmbedded system ended at about
>>> 80 GB and many unnecessary binary packages).
>>>
>>> The default network configuration is to fetch the IP address from a DHCP server.
>>> Otherwise add an etc/network/interfaces entry in the output/target directory
>>> of buildroot with the static IP configuration, and
>>> make
>>> to re-generate sdcard.img including this configuration file. Similarly if the
>>> usr/share/uhd/images binary files are needed: copy in output/target and make.
>>>
>>> JM
>>>
>>> --
>>> JM Friedt, FEMTO-ST Time & Frequency/SENSeOR, 26 rue de l'Epitaphe,
>>> 25000 Besancon, France
>>>
>>> May 29, 2020 3:33 AM, "Glen Langston" <glen.i.langston@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your help.
>>>>
>>>> I've written the image to an SDCARD and the PI4 boots to
>>>> the command line prompt. The password is accepted and
>>>> I've looked around.
>>>>
>>>> Gnuradio seems to be installed, but not the xwindow system.
>>>>
>>>> How do you use gnuradio-companion etc?
>>>>
>>>> I could not find "xstartup" or some such program.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>> Glen
>>> On May 24, 2020, at 3:59 PM, jean-michel.friedt@femto-st.fr wrote:
>>>
>>> I have uploaded http://jmfriedt.org/sdcard.img
>>> my Buildroot image generated for RPi4 that I have been
>>> using daily for the last 2 months, so pretty sure it is
>>> working. Actually it is 1.1 GB because of lapack needed
>>> for gnss-sdr but GNU Radio 3.8/Python3 will only require
>>> about 500 MB.
>>> Gwenhael Goavec-Merou ported all GNU Radio related software/libraries
>>> to Buildroot: the missing parts for gnss-sdr are found at
>>> https://github.com/oscimp/PlutoSDR in the for_next branch.
>>>
>>> root passwd=root, no user account, USRP FPGA images to be added
>>> in usr/share/uhd/images manually if libuhd is needed. Tested with
>>> RTL-SDR DVB-T dongle, PlutoSDR (gr-iio) and B210.
>>>
>>> JM
>>>
>>> --
>>> JM Friedt, FEMTO-ST Time & Frequency/SENSeOR, 26 rue de l'Epitaphe,
>>> 25000 Besancon, France
>>>
>>> May 24, 2020 9:51 PM, "Glen I Langston" <glen.i.langston@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello
>>>
>>> I've been a great proponent of gnuradio, but I'm finding in
>>> increasing difficult to do anything new, as installation of 3.8 is
>>> essentially impossible for most people.
>>>
>>> I've written and built my own python modules and C++ blocks.
>>>
>>> However, despite months of trying now, I can not get 3.8 to install
>>> on a raspberry pi.
>>>
>>> Has anyone achieved 3.8 on a raspberry pi?
>>>
>>> If so can you please save the entire OS, gzip compressed and put it
>>> online somewhere. It will probably be about 3 GB compressed.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Glen
>>>
>>> Note that there are many many (too many) different guides on line
>>>
>>> 1) apt-get
>>>
>>> 2) pybombs
>>>
>>> 3) git clone then build
>>>
>>> each one fails in a different way.