SDRPlay SDRPlay and Linux

[richardrosa]

Greetings All,

After several years of playing with a cheap RTLDSR, I decided to upgrade to something that was a bit more polished.
I settled on an DSRPLAY RSPdx. I'm beginning to wonder if this was a mistake...

I do NOT own any Windows machines. I run Suse Linux.
The Suse repositories provide a number of very nice SDR applications (GQRX/DUMP1090/etc) that worked fine with the RTLSDR.
None of these pre-built applications appear to function with the SDRPLAY.

The ONLY way that I have been able to utilize this SDR is by downloading and running the 6 scripts available on the SDRPLAY site.
These scripts took about an hour to execute (long compilations and 4 reboots).
When they completed, I was able to run CubicSDR only.
Unfortunately, I find this program a bit cumbersome, and it seems to have a few quirks.

I have downloaded and compiled the source for GQRX. It does not recognize the SDRPLAY.
I have tried selecting 'other' as the device, with the string:
"soapy=0,driver=sdrplay"
as suggested, but the program still will not communicate with the device.

I've also tried downloading and compiling various DUMP1090 binaries,
but they throw some cryptic C errors (I have ZERO 'C' coding skills).

Can anyone suggest how I can get at LEAST GQRX & DUMP1090 working with this device?
Or should I return this unit from whence it came and exchange it for an SDR that has better Linux support?


Thanx.


Richard Rosa

 

[lwvmobile]

Where you able to compile SoapySDR successfully. If so, you may have to recompile GQRX after building SoapySDR. Did CubicSDR that you compiled also use the SoapySDR module you compiled? May help to check your steps and try again. Unfortunately I don't own an SDRPlay device so I can't test a build to see what all works, I'm just going off of the github instructions, I'll just paste links here, may be worth a second reading over, or just making a new folder and trying again from scratch.

BuildGuide

Vendor and platform neutral SDR support library. Contribute to pothosware/SoapySDR development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

BuildGuide

Vendor and platform neutral SDR support library. Contribute to pothosware/SoapySDR development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Home

Soapy SDR plugin for SDRPlay APIv3. Contribute to pothosware/SoapySDRPlay3 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

That last link may be crucial, you may need to make the SDRPlay module for SoapySDR.

 

[richardrosa]

Where you able to compile SoapySDR successfully. If so, you may have to recompile GQRX after building SoapySDR. Did CubicSDR that you compiled also use the SoapySDR module you compiled? May help to check your steps and try again. Unfortunately I don't own an SDRPlay device so I can't test a build to see what all works, I'm just going off of the github instructions, I'll just paste links here, may be worth a second reading over, or just making a new folder and trying again from scratch.

BuildGuide

Vendor and platform neutral SDR support library. Contribute to pothosware/SoapySDR development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

BuildGuide

Vendor and platform neutral SDR support library. Contribute to pothosware/SoapySDR development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Home

Soapy SDR plugin for SDRPlay APIv3. Contribute to pothosware/SoapySDRPlay3 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

That last link may be crucial, you may need to make the SDRPlay module for SoapySDR.

The SoapySDR did compile, as did the CubicSDR (Using the scripts provided by the SDRplay site).
For GQRX, I downloaded the source and compiled AFTER all of these scripts had executed successfully.
GQRX compiled OK, and it starts up, but it cannot seem to locate the SDRPlay device.

I could NOT get the repository version of CubicSDR to run with this device. ALL of the scripts needed to complete download & compile before ANYTHING would work. The compiled CubicSDR version is the ONLY thing that is functional at this time.

I'll try again with the links provided, and see if this makes any difference.

Thanx.


Richard Rosa

 

[deadite66]

did you compile gqrx with soapy support?

mine says.

gqrx
gr-osmosdr 0.2.0.0 (0.2.0) gnuradio 3.8.2.0
built-in source types: file fcd rtl rtl_tcp uhd hackrf bladerf rfspace airspy soapy redpitaya
gr::log :WARN: file_source0 - file size is not a multiple of item size
Resampling audio 96000 -> 48000
BandPlanFile is /home/lee/.config/gqrx/bandplan.csv
BookmarksFile is /home/lee/.config/gqrx/bookmarks.csv
[INFO] [UHD] linux; GNU C++ version 10.2.0; Boost_107500; UHD_4.0.0.0-0-unknown
gr-osmosdr 0.2.0.0 (0.2.0) gnuradio 3.8.2.0
built-in source types: file fcd rtl rtl_tcp uhd hackrf bladerf rfspace airspy soapy redpitaya

 

[richardrosa]

did you compile gqrx with soapy support?

mine says.

I Have to apologize. I did NOT compile GQRX. There were just too many missing requirements (mostly QT5 stuff). I Downloaded the generic executable instead. After running so many compilations, I've lost track of what I've actually done :-(

When starting this version I get:

gr-osmosdr 898d1279 (0.1.5git) gnuradio 3.7.11
built-in source types: file fcd rtl rtl_tcp plutosdr sdrplay hackrf rfspace airspy airspyhf soapy redpitaya

FATAL: SoapySDR:evice::make() no match

The file /etc/udev/rules.d/66-mirics.rules SEEMS to have an entry for my unit (i'm assuming this is the right .rules file) even though the
copy in the GQRX distribution did not:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device",ATTRS{idVendor}=="1df7",ATTRS{idProduct}=="3030",MODE:="0666"

something else must be missing, but I'm stumped as to what it is....

Thanx.

Richard Rosa

 

[lwvmobile]

I Have to apologize. I did NOT compile GQRX. There were just too many missing requirements (mostly QT5 stuff). I Downloaded the generic executable instead. After running so many compilations, I've lost track of what I've actually done :-(

Should just be a matter of installing those missing QT5 development packages from your package manager. I can't say I'm overly familiar with OpenSUSE, so I couldn't tell you exactly what the packages might be called in YaST. You might have to enable some extra repositories before you can find them though, not sure. I think if you can manage to get GQRX compiled on that system, you should be gold. I don't know if its fair to say that device isn't Linux friendly, its just that there isn't a pre-compiled driver for SoapySDR, which probably means its not "Open Source" in a licensing sense.

 

[ka3jjz]

You might find some more direct help here - with 800 members, surely someone can...

SDRPlayUsers groups.io Group

Welcome *to the SDRPlay Users forum here at groups.io. We are here to enjoy the world of SDR radio. If you are new to SDR radio please let us know. We can answer your questions or find out where your questions can be answered. We are a growing group. The more people we have the greater depth of...

groups.io

Mike

 

[ks4ec]

Greetings All,

After several years of playing with a cheap RTLDSR, I decided to upgrade to something that was a bit more polished.
I settled on an DSRPLAY RSPdx. I'm beginning to wonder if this was a mistake...

I do NOT own any Windows machines. I run Suse Linux.
The Suse repositories provide a number of very nice SDR applications (GQRX/DUMP1090/etc) that worked fine with the RTLSDR.
None of these pre-built applications appear to function with the SDRPLAY.

The ONLY way that I have been able to utilize this SDR is by downloading and running the 6 scripts available on the SDRPLAY site.
These scripts took about an hour to execute (long compilations and 4 reboots).
When they completed, I was able to run CubicSDR only.
Unfortunately, I find this program a bit cumbersome, and it seems to have a few quirks.

I have downloaded and compiled the source for GQRX. It does not recognize the SDRPLAY.
I have tried selecting 'other' as the device, with the string:
"soapy=0,driver=sdrplay"
as suggested, but the program still will not communicate with the device.

I've also tried downloading and compiling various DUMP1090 binaries,
but they throw some cryptic C errors (I have ZERO 'C' coding skills).

Can anyone suggest how I can get at LEAST GQRX & DUMP1090 working with this device?
Or should I return this unit from whence it came and exchange it for an SDR that has better Linux support?


Thanx.


Richard Rosa

So, here is something that helped me in setting up the SDRPlay with another 3rd party app RTLSDR-Airband, but it talks about exactly the things you are talking about with getting the SDRPlay to work in Linux and has some great shortcuts to get everything loaded and compiled. While his main focus is running it on the Raspberry he talks extensively about the pitfalls that people fall into when loading in Linux on x86. Hopefully it will help you. It is long but worth the time, just when I thought I would skip a part I learned something new!