[amsat-bb] How to tame gr-satellites?

[Doug Phelps]

Suggestion. how about if somebody who knows what they're doing set it up on a raspberry pi and then others can just copy the SD card and be off.

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-------- Original Message --------
On Sep 16, 2019, 9:52 AM, Paul Stoetzer via AMSAT-BB wrote:

> It took me about 6 hours of work to get gr-satellites going on my Fedora
> handheld computer I used for portable LO-90 operations (and hope to use for
> portable Taurus-1 ops soon as well). I have some Linux familiarity, but,
> yes you do end up running into wrong versions of dependencies and missing
> dependencies and having to look up a lot of things to get things working.
>
> Until recently, I would have suggested that Arch or Manjaro make it really
> easy to run gr-satellites because it's a very simple process to build it
> from the Arch User Repository. I was able to get it running on an Arch
> laptop in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately, gr-satellites does not work with
> GNU Radio 3.8 yet and Arch and Manjaro both ship GNU Radio 3.8 by default,
> so I can't really suggest that as an "easy solution" any more.
>
> gr-satellites is a great tool and Dani deserves a lot of credit for the
> work he has done to support so many different satellites. What would be
> great is for someone to develop a method to make it simple to package for
> various distributions and a good front-end for using it. That would not be
> an easy task, but it would go a long way towards making it friendly for
> less experienced Linux users.
>
> 73,
>
> Paul, N8HM
>
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 10:35 AM Hans BX2ABT via AMSAT-BB <
> amsat-bb at amsat.org> wrote:
>
>> I was going to write a rant about gr-satellites, but then again that
>> would only help me release some of my chagrin and not help met get
>> going, so instead the question in the general interes of this list......
>>
>> "How can mere mortals start to get going with gr-satellites?"
>>
>> Been a Linux end-user for 20 years now, so I know my way around,
>> although I can not claim to be an expert. Usually with a quick search
>> online I can find enough info to get going or solve a problem. Even the
>> odd alteration in some source code is not something I am strange to,
>> although a programmer I am not. And then there is GNU Radio.......which
>> almost seems like it comes from another planet. Installing it, no
>> problem with the package manager. I even had success with PyBOMBS, until
>> that wasn't updated anymore. But then, once you get past the basics
>> installation trouble start with OOT modules, dependencies that can't be
>> met, and flow graphs that won't compile. My biggest gripe is that
>> documentation is very minimalist and often tells you how, not why, which
>> doesn't help you in understanding the troubles that you ran into.
>> gr-satellites is a good example of that, because Daniel writes these
>> bare bones flow graphs and then what? There is no view-able output, not
>> many hints on what blocks do, or how to implement them if they are missing.
>>
>> In short, it seems you first need a four year university course in GNU
>> Radio and Python before you can start using it. That seems silly and a
>> waste of resources, because even I can see the potential of GNU
>> Radio/gr-satellites, especially with this new Taurus-1 sat with Codec-2
>> transponder around.
>>
>> So if you please, share your experience in how beginners can set up and
>> use gr-satellites. What are necessary steps? What are pitfalls to avoid?
>> And please also the "why", not only the "what". I guess that apart from
>> me others will also be grateful for this.
>>
>> On my shack computer I run the latest Kubuntu version with GNU Radio
>> 3.7.13.4 and I guess that is a reasonable starting point because of the
>> popularity of Ubuntu and because it is Debian based. Although since a
>> lot of GNU Radio needs to be compiled by hand is probably won't matter
>> that much.
>>
>> Reading the above it still does sound a bit like a rant, but it was not
>> written as such, believe me. Cheers for the replies and 73 de Hans
>>
>>
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> _______________________________________________
> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
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> Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
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