OP25 VirtualBox Project - Run OP25 on Windows 7

[jeremyzone]

Is there a way to see the LDU2 header data using OP25?

 

[mrlindstrom]

Has the OP25 website moved or is it just down atm?

 

[BM82557]

Has the OP25 website moved or is it just down atm?

It's been down quite awhile, see this post - http://forums.radioreference.com/vo...ecoding-software/317998-op25-repo-github.html

 

[mrlindstrom]

It's been down quite awhile, see this post - http://forums.radioreference.com/vo...ecoding-software/317998-op25-repo-github.html

Hmm, they made it sound like the entire osmocom site was down in that thread. The other project subdomains for osmocom are still functioning. Wonder what happened to the op25 subdomain.

 

[mrlindstrom]

Quick PSA, the OP25 site seems to be back up.

 

[daniel_reetz]

So, I've been working on installing this for the better part of a week. My goal is to create a very complete up-to-date tutorial on how to make all of this work, and to decode my local P25 PII system.

On both Linux Mint 17, and Ubuntu LTS 14.04, I can get through the entire install process without too much pain, but when I go to run scope.py, I get this error on both operating systems:

user@comp:~/target/src/gr-op25/op25/gr-op25_repeater/apps$ ./scope.py --args "rtl=0" -N 'LNA:42' -f 859.10000e6 -S 2400000 -q 47 -v 0
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./scope.py", line 48, in <module>
    from gnuradio import audio, eng_notation, gr, gru, filter, blocks, fft, analog, digital
ImportError: No module named gnuradio

I can see that gnuradio is installed:

user@comp:~/target/src/gr-op25/op25/gr-op25_repeater/apps$ pybombs -p default inv
Showing package state:
airspy:	installed
hackrf:	installed
uhd:	installed
gr-op25:	installed
bladeRF:	installed
libosmo-dsp:	installed
apache-thrift:	installed
gr-iqbal:	installed
osmo-sdr:	installed
gr-osmosdr:	installed
rtl-sdr:	installed
gnuradio:	installed

I have the feeling that this has something to do with setup_env or the env in general. I have googled this error and every fix suggests something related, but none of the suggested fixes have worked for me. Is this as simple as setting up the env or something like that?

 

[mrlindstrom]

Try this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQeCzksDi4&t=7m15s

 

[daniel_reetz]

Awesome. That worked -

source ./setup_env.sh

instead of

source setup_env.sh

.

The bummer that I'm facing now is that although the GUI starts, I'm getting a series of

process_data_unit timeout
process_data_unit timeout
process_data_unit timeout

This is the fastest "spare" computer that I have (Lenovo T400 laptop, Core 2 Duo t9400 CPU 8GB RAM). Wonder if it is the USB port. I'll spend some time with this again tonight.

 

[mrlindstrom]

Try turning your sample rate down, or sometimes I've seen just switching between the tabs kickstarts it.

Edit: I think the timeout can also occur if the signal isn't that great.

 

[jeremyzone]

Awesome. That worked -

source ./setup_env.sh

instead of

source setup_env.sh

.

The bummer that I'm facing now is that although the GUI starts, I'm getting a series of

process_data_unit timeout
process_data_unit timeout
process_data_unit timeout

This is the fastest "spare" computer that I have (Lenovo T400 laptop, Core 2 Duo t9400 CPU 8GB RAM). Wonder if it is the USB port. I'll spend some time with this again tonight.

It sounds to me like you need to mess with the offset/ fine tuning values until you get a solid lock on the signal. OP25 is kind of finicky about being exactly on the right frequency

In my recollection, you usually get a bunch of "0" if your processor isn't fast enough, like "000process_data_unit timeout"

 

[boatbod]

That is correct... you will see timeouts if the control channel isn't locked on.

Using the scope, adjust the control channel tuning to put the peak in the center of the display. That should get you close, then fine tune by using the other tabs to vertically center the psk signal and clean up the symbol decode.

 

[daniel_reetz]

Well, I was gung-ho to write a guide, but mrlindstrom's video really does a great job. If you're trying to get an install going, this is definitely the go-to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxQeCzksDi4 - thanks, mrlindstrom.

I am decoding voice from the local system and it sounds pretty good - I'll be doing a comparison with my WS1098 at some point. I wasn't able to get it to work with the stock antenna, I had to use something outdoors. At least in the SVRCS area, a coat hanger won't cut it.

So now I feel like I don't quite fully understand what's going on. The SVRCS system frequencies range from 769-774 Mhz. That's wider than the bandwidth my RTLSDR can provide.

Does OP25 tune on the fly?
Can I use two dongles to cover a wider range? (does this even make sense?)
What is all this traffic that I can see in the spectrum view that is not decoding?

 

[natedawg1604]

....

So now I feel like I don't quite fully understand what's going on. The SVRCS system frequencies range from 769-774 Mhz. That's wider than the bandwidth my RTLSDR can provide.

Does OP25 tune on the fly?
Can I use two dongles to cover a wider range? (does this even make sense?)
What is all this traffic that I can see in the spectrum view that is not decoding?

No problem, OP-25 will automatically re-tune to all voice frequencies with one dongle. All you have to do, is OMIT a center frequency from the .TSV config file. It's that simple.

 

[Fizz306]

Running GNU Radio in a VirtualBox is generally not a good idea. It just isn't going to work very well. You're also going to have USB issues trying to read the high speed sample rates from the RTL device. Expect the worst, hope for the best applies here.

Ask ten different people on which Linux distro to use, you'll likely get ten different answers. Most current Debian based distros will work. I use Mint 16 myself, Ubuntu will work too.

Forget the SpenchWiki instructions. Those are way out of date and they're based on the older GNU Radio v3.6 API. The current OP25 project requires the v3.7 API. Also, the required install method for GNU Radio is via the PyBOMBS install script. You can't install OP25 without it.

The absolute bare minimum install steps are as follows:

Install the OS(assuming Ubuntu or Mint), then open a terminal session and

sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get update

Reboot if it asks, otherwise type the following:

cd ~/
git clone git://github.com/pybombs/pybombs
cd pybombs
./pybombs install gnuradio

This will ask for some basic config parameters, but you can just enter through them and take the defaults. Based on your machine, this can take a few hours. Don't try to install GNU Radio with less then 4 gigs of ram, it might fail hours into the process. Once the install process is complete, type the following:

./pybombs env

This command creates a shell script that sets up the environment variables needed by GNU Radio and is required.You only need to do this once. It should spit out the path to this script when it completes. The output will look similar to this:

source /home/<user>/target/setup_env.sh

That shell script will need to be executed each time you open a new terminal session. You can add this command to your ~/.bashrc script so it gets executed every time you open a terminal session. Edit the ~/.bashrc file with a text editor and add the following on the very last line, save and close.

source ~/target/setup_env.sh

You can now install OP25 and all the prerequisites needed including RTL support by typing the following:

cd ~/pybombs
./pybombs install gr-op25

Not sure if this is required after a fresh install, but it wouldn't hurt to run the following command after OP25 finishes:

sudo ldconfig

This just reloads libraries and loads new ones with the system.

That is all you need to do... If all goes well and everything is installed I'll answer any questions you have on running OP25. One last thing, don't expect any GRC support for OP25 because there isn't any. I've been running it since the beginning of the year on a local LSM system with perfect decoding. It's amazing! :wink:

I can't seem to figure this out, and hoping you all can help. Ubuntu 14.04 in VMWare Player -

rob@ubuntu:~$ cd Desktop/pybombs
rob@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$ ./pybombs install gnuradio
bash: ./pybombs: Is a directory

I just can't figure out what's going on here...

 

[boatbod]

I can't seem to figure this out, and hoping you all can help. Ubuntu 14.04 in VMWare Player -

rob@ubuntu:~$ cd Desktop/pybombs
rob@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$ ./pybombs install gnuradio
bash: ./pybombs: Is a directory

I just can't figure out what's going on here...

Try running:
pybombs install gnuradio

(same command but without the leading ./)

 

[mrlindstrom]

Depending on how you cloned pybombs, you may need to go one directory deeper (e.g. one more: cd pybombs)before you run the command.

 

[Fizz306]

robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$ pybombs install gnuradio
pybombs: command not found
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$ cd pybombs
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs/pybombs$ pybombs install gnuradio
pybombs: command not found
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs/pybombs$ ./pybombs install gnuradio
bash: ./pybombs: No such file or directory
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs/pybombs$ cd
robfissel@ubuntu:~$ cd Desktop
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ ./pybombs install gnuradio
bash: ./pybombs: Is a directory
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ cd pybombs
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$ ./pybombs install gnuradio
bash: ./pybombs: Is a directory
robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$


I just tried all of these options, and nothing seems to work! I tried this on another fresh VM of Mint with literally the same results. Kind of stumped here. Being a new guy to Linux doesn't help...

 

[mrlindstrom]

can you do an

ls -al

while in the Desktop/pybombs folder and post the results?

 

[Fizz306]

robfissel@ubuntu:~/Desktop/pybombs$ ls -al
total 116
drwxrwxr-x 5 robfissel robfissel 4096 Apr 12 11:08 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 robfissel robfissel 4096 Apr 12 11:08 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 135 Apr 12 11:08 AUTHORS
drwxrwxr-x 2 robfissel robfissel 4096 Apr 12 11:08 .bash_completion.d
-rwxrwxr-x 1 robfissel robfissel 2809 Apr 12 11:08 convert_1to2.py
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 35147 Apr 12 11:08 COPYING
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 12059 Apr 12 11:08 ez_setup.py
drwxrwxr-x 8 robfissel robfissel 4096 Apr 12 11:08 .git
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 46 Apr 12 11:08 .gitignore
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 105 Apr 12 11:08 .gitmodules
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 429 Apr 12 11:08 .project
drwxrwxr-x 10 robfissel robfissel 4096 Apr 12 11:08 pybombs
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 295 Apr 12 11:08 .pydevproject
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 11002 Apr 12 11:08 README.md
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 67 Apr 12 11:08 setup.cfg
-rw-rw-r-- 1 robfissel robfissel 5022 Apr 12 11:08 setup.py

 

[mrlindstrom]

I believe this is the newer code for pybombs which requires you to build it first. Run:

$ python setup.py build

from within the Desktop/pybombs folder and then see what kind of output you get from that. Hopefully it will tell you where it placed the pybombs binary file and you can then run it from there.

Also a few more notes from the pybombs github:

Quickstart

For the impatient:

Install PyBOMBS as per the previous section
Add a list of recipes, e.g. by running

$ pybombs recipes add gr-recipes git+https://github.com/gnuradio/gr-recipes.git  
$ pybombs recipes add gr-etcetera git+https://github.com/gnuradio/gr-etcetera.git
Create a prefix (a place to store your local installation):

$ pybombs prefix init /path/to/prefix -a myprefix
All commands after this will use myprefix as the default prefix. You can change the default prefix later by running pybombs config default_prefix NEWPREFIX

Start installing:

$ pybombs [-p myprefix] install gnuradio gr-osmosdr
This installs GNU Radio and gr-osmosdr and all dependencies. The -p switch is not necessary in this case, because it is already the default prefix.