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

Hans BX2ABT hans.bx2abt at msa.hinet.net
Tue Sep 17 06:58:10 UTC 2019 

Hello Daniel and others on the list.

Thanks for the reply. I didn't know you were reading this list.

But I feel you are overthinking this a bit. If setting up GNU 
Radio/gr-satellites can be really complicated then ask yourself why this 
is. And is GNU Radio/gr-satellites any good if it is? You spend a lot of 
time and effort in creating and maintaining gr-satellites, but only a 
handful people in the world use it. If I were you I would be 
disappointed that the effort you put into something only serves so few, 
while it could bring joy to many.

In my 20 years with Linux I hardly ever needed to ask help on mailing 
lists or forums, because with a good web search and some proper reading 
there were always answers around, if I couldn't already have found them 
in HOWTOs or FAQs. Takes a few minutes, and a few tries, but then I'm 
usually good to go. Only in extreme cases do I resort to asking around.

I think the major problem with GNU Radio/gr-satellites is good, well 
written documentation on how to get going and on trouble shooting. Let 
me give you an example....

On the gr-satellites github page it says you need to fulfill some 
dependency requirements before compiling gr-satellites.

[quote]

  * Phil Karn's KA9Q |libfec|. A fork that builds in modern linux
    systems can be found here <https://github.com/daniestevez/libfec>.
  * construct <https://construct.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>, at least
    version 2.9.
  * requests <https://pypi.org/project/requests/2.7.0/>.
  * swig <http://www.swig.org/>

[/unquote]

The above is very ambiguous. It indicates "why" but not "how".

1) Do I have to compile and install all this myself, or can they be 
found in my distro's repositories?

2) Are they all installed with ./configure, make, make install or are 
there other methods?

The answers are (I think, but not sure):

1) You do have to compile and install the first three, but you can use 
swig from you distro's repository.

2) libfec is compiled with ./configure, make, make install. Construct 
and requests can be found in distro's repositories but are probably 
older versions and they are called (on Debian systems) python-construct 
and python requests. So the best way to go is to install by using pip.

Because of this ambiguous information it took me a good part of this 
morning to figure out. I'm not easily frustrated, but a bit vexed that I 
needed to spend so much time on something that could have been easy if 
the information on how to do it was more forthcoming.

Another example. I've got GNU Radio and gr-satellites installed and I 
figured out where the .grc files were hiding. I open one and am greeted 
with loads of red because of missing blocks. There is also another 
warning that says "Port is not connected". I've been reading and 
searching the web for two hours already, but still haven't got a clue 
about the "why" and certainly not about "how" to proceed now. I don't 
mind trouble shooting, but then I need at least some hints to get 
started. Right now I haven't.

Third example: last year I did have a working GNURadio/gr-satellites 
setup with pyBOMBS (before that broke). I did see some telemetry rolling 
down a terminal window, but the last block in every flow graph is always 
this SatNogs Telemetry Forwarder. Tried to figure out if it was actually 
forwarding, where it ended up, where I could see my forwarded data. 
Couldn't figure it out, couldn't find any documentation or examples, so 
I gave up.

I wrote this before: GNU Radio is not a mainstream piece of software, so 
support comes from a small community of people who are deeply into this 
sort of thing (and who often can't really imagine the needs of ordinary 
users). gr-satellites is even more of a project that caters to only a 
very few. With little documentation that can help a beginner many will 
be discouraged in trying, which in turn will not increase the community 
of users. A vicious cycle, in other words.

I don't believe in "band-aid" methods like dockers, live CDs, etc. From 
my own experience I know that they will also create problems and 
obstacles, and discourage the lesser inclined to go on with Linux/GNU 
Radio. You mention gr-satellites used in education and outreach. For 
them it dockers and live-CDs could be useful, but then again, they would 
probably also ask for the help of an radio amateur. If that amateur 
knows his stuff then with a regular distro, well installed software and 
problem solving skills there would be no need for dockers, etc.

With this new Taurus-1 bird up it seems a good time to get some more 
hams using gr-satellites. People who already have working setups, please 
share whatever info you have, so everyone can benefit.


Cheers and 73 de Hans (BX2ABT)


P.S. Daniel, I hope I have not sounded too harsh in the above. Without 
your work we wouldn't have much telemetry decoding on Linux at all, so 
I'm not going to end without thanking you for writing gr-satellites. Cheers.




On 09/17/2019 11:18 AM, Daniel Estévez via AMSAT-BB wrote:
> 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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>>>> available
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>>>>> 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
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>>>> of
>>>>> AMSAT-NA.
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>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>> 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
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>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership.
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>>>> 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
>>
> _______________________________________________
> 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

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