HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => SDR - Software Defined Radio => Topic started by: IQ_imbalance on March 19, 2014, 0141 UTC
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Some trials and tribulations. Bought a NooElec RTL-SDR off Amazon, and configured an old Powerbook G4 with Ubuntu 12.04 to run it. Installed gnuradio, rtl-sdr, etc from source (miraculously) without issues. Was able to build some simple radio/fft devices with gnuradio-companion but everytime I tried to demodulate a signal I received volk memory errors. Rtl_test shows the dongle is working, but rtl_fm wouldn't demodulate wbfm signals to anything intelligible (static was all i could make out!).
At this point I was fearing I had a deaf RTL-SDR, and decided to at least try it on a different hardware/software combo to be sure. Installed Gqrx on an intel Mac running 10.7...and BINGO. It was pulling in WBFM (and NFM) just fine.
So...some ups and downs. Haven't tried using the dongle with Gnuradio on the intel mac yet but that's in the near future. Not sure what to do about my Ubuntu PPC system yet....I might try downloading individual components and recompiling.
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My compliments----you got way further along with gnuradio that I ever did. I ran gqrx as my "way out of this mess" and it worked fine. Not a lot of bells and whistles---but it worked. I was hoping that gqrx would move along some more, but it has not yet.
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I've been trying to modify rtl_tcp (under Mac OS X) to act as a SDR-14/IQ type server, so SdrDx can use it. It sorta works, but data is getting lost somewhere along the way. Hopefully I will have some time to get back to the project.
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might have to hang up the hat on the old G4 laptop. None of the linux distros are doing much in the way of PPC these days....