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

Tue Sep 17 03:18:38 UTC 2019

Hi all,

Just to join the discussion. To be honest, these are problems that are
already identified. There are many Amateurs who don't want or cannot
install Linux and GNU Radio to run gr-satellites. There are also some
people interested in using gr-satellites for education or outreach, but
they have limited abilities with computers, so setting up GNU Radio and
everything else can be really complicated.

This is not a problem that affects gr-satellites in particular. I think
it can be applied to any other GNU Radio out-of-tree module as well.

There are several ideas that would make using gr-satellites easier, some
of which have already been mentioned: windows builds, live CD, raspberry
pi image, docker container.

Unfortunately currently I simply don't have the time to get into any of
these, but if anyone wants to collaborate I may be able to give some
support.

Just keep in mind that gr-satellites is updated often, as new satellites
get launched, so any form of release should be updated as often as the
Github repository in order to be useful (since often people are
especially interested in decoding that particular satellite which just
launched a few days ago).

In any case, I'm open for discussions about what you would consider
helpful, since getting the software up and running is only part of the
problem. As Paul mentioned, you also need to interface with your SDR
hardware, and essentially configure all these tools that surround
gr-satellites correctly according to your use case.

By the way, support for GNU Radio 3.8 in gr-satellites will be hopefully
done next week.

73,

Dani.

El 16/9/19 a las 19:24, Alex Free - N7AGF via AMSAT-BB escribió:
> Even better.  There appear to be several more "mature" docker gnuradio
> 3.7.x containers floating around from a couple years ago.  I'll get into it
> when I find a spare moment.
> 
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 10:09 AM Paul Stoetzer <n8hm at arrl.net> wrote:
> 
>> That is a good interim step, but note that gr-satellites does not
>> currently operate with GNU Radio 3.8.
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> Paul, N8HM
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 1:05 PM Alex Free - N7AGF via AMSAT-BB <
>> amsat-bb at amsat.org> wrote:
>>
>>> 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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>>>>>> expressed
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>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
>>>> Opinions expressed
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>>> of
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>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
>>>> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
>>> Opinions
>>>> expressed
>>>> are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of
>>>> AMSAT-NA.
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>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
>>> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
>>> Opinions expressed
>>> are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of
>>> AMSAT-NA.
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>>
> _______________________________________________
> Sent via AMSAT-BB at amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available
> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed
> are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA.
> Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
> Subscription settings: https://www.amsat.org/mailman/listinfo/amsat-bb
> 