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

[Alex Free - N7AGF]

It sounds like the perfect application to containerize.  Forking the
available gnuradio-3.8 docker to include gr-satellites should be doable.

https://gitlab.com/theseus-cores/theseus-docker/tree/master/gnuradio-3.8

On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 8:12 AM Doug Phelps via AMSAT-BB <amsat-bb at amsat.org>
wrote:

> 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.
>
> Sent from ProtonMail mobile
>
> -------- 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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> _______________________________________________
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