Recently, I received a device that was originally marketed as a USB DAB/DVB/FM receiver, containing a chipset compatible with the utilities from the RTL-SDR project.
It cost £17.50 (roughly €22.42/2159円/US$27.45, according to WolframAlpha) including free shipping from the US.
What’s in the kit?
The receiver that I ordered was supplied with only a remote control, and a stubby antenna with a magnetic base. No CD-ROMs, or user manuals were included.
About the hardware
The eBay listing page claims that it contains an Elonics E4000 tuner IC, and a RealTek RTL2832U DVB-T demodulator IC.
lsusb -v Reports:
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| Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:2838 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. | |
| Device Descriptor: | |
| bLength 18 | |
| bDescriptorType 1 | |
| bcdUSB 2.00 | |
| bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) | |
| bDeviceSubClass 0 | |
| bDeviceProtocol 0 | |
| bMaxPacketSize0 64 | |
| idVendor 0x0bda Realtek Semiconductor Corp. | |
| idProduct 0x2838 | |
| bcdDevice 1.00 | |
| iManufacturer 1 Realtek | |
| iProduct 2 RTL2838UHIDIR | |
| iSerial 3 00000088 | |
| bNumConfigurations 1 | |
| Configuration Descriptor: | |
| bLength 9 | |
| bDescriptorType 2 | |
| wTotalLength 34 | |
| bNumInterfaces 2 | |
| bConfigurationValue 1 | |
| iConfiguration 4 USB2.0-Bulk&Iso | |
| bmAttributes 0x80 | |
| (Bus Powered) | |
| MaxPower 500mA | |
| Interface Descriptor: | |
| bLength 9 | |
| bDescriptorType 4 | |
| bInterfaceNumber 0 | |
| bAlternateSetting 0 | |
| bNumEndpoints 1 | |
| bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class | |
| bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass | |
| bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol | |
| iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface | |
| Endpoint Descriptor: | |
| bLength 7 | |
| bDescriptorType 5 | |
| bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN | |
| bmAttributes 2 | |
| Transfer Type Bulk | |
| Synch Type None | |
| Usage Type Data | |
| wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes | |
| bInterval 0 | |
| Interface Descriptor: | |
| bLength 9 | |
| bDescriptorType 4 | |
| bInterfaceNumber 1 | |
| bAlternateSetting 0 | |
| bNumEndpoints 0 | |
| bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class | |
| bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass | |
| bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol | |
| iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface | |
| Device Qualifier (for other device speed): | |
| bLength 10 | |
| bDescriptorType 6 | |
| bcdUSB 2.00 | |
| bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) | |
| bDeviceSubClass 0 | |
| bDeviceProtocol 0 | |
| bMaxPacketSize0 64 | |
| bNumConfigurations 2 | |
| Device Status: 0x0000 | |
| (Bus Powered) |
Installing RTL-SDR, and associated utilities
Download and run the build-gnuradio script, as recommended by Andrew Back:
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| tysonkey@ubuntu:~/SoftRadio$ wget http://www.sbrac.org/files/build-gnuradio | |
| –2012-07-19 12:35:19– http://www.sbrac.org/files/build-gnuradio | |
| Resolving http://www.sbrac.org… 174.142.32.20 | |
| Connecting to http://www.sbrac.org|174.142.32.20|:80… connected. | |
| HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK | |
| Length: 29181 (28K) [text/plain] | |
| Saving to: `build-gnuradio' | |
| 100%[======================================================================================================================================================>] 29,181 80.8K/s in 0.4s | |
| 2012-07-19 12:35:21 (80.8 KB/s) – `build-gnuradio' saved [29181/29181] | |
| tysonkey@ubuntu:~/SoftRadio$ chmod +x build-gnuradio | |
| tysonkey@ubuntu:~/SoftRadio$ ./build-gnuradio | |
| This script will install Gnu Radio from current GIT sources | |
| You will require Internet access from the computer on which this | |
| script runs. You will also require SUDO access. You will require | |
| approximately 500MB of free disk space to perform the build. | |
| This script will, as a side-effect, remove any existing Gnu Radio | |
| installation that was installed from your Linux distribution packages. | |
| It must do this to prevent problems due to interference between | |
| a linux-distribution-installed Gnu Radio/UHD and one installed from GIT source. | |
| The whole process may take up to two hours to complete, depending on the | |
| capabilities of your system. | |
| !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | |
| NOTE: if you run into problems while running this script, you can re-run it with | |
| the –verbose option to produce lots of diagnostic output to help debug problems. | |
| This script has been written to anticipate some of the more common problems one might | |
| encounter building ANY large, complex software package. But it is not pefect, and | |
| there are certainly some situations it could encounter that it cannot deal with | |
| gracefully. Altering the system configuration from something reasonably standard, | |
| removing parts of the filesystem, moving system libraries around arbitrarily, etc, | |
| it likely cannot cope with. It is just a script. It isn't intuitive or artificially | |
| intelligent. It tries to make life a little easier for you, but at the end of the day | |
| if it runs into trouble, a certain amount of knowledge on your part about | |
| system configuration and idiosyncrasies will inevitably be necessary. | |
| Proceed? |
At this stage, the script will request elevated privileges, in order to search for prerequisite packages using the system package management utilities.
Since the disclaimer warns that the process may take a long time, I’d recommend obtaining one’s favourite beverage; ensuring that the PC used has a sufficient amount of free disk space, and is well-ventilated (if using a laptop), to prevent it from potentially overheating, and unexpectedly shutting down; and searching for something else to do in the meantime…
For some reason, the Checking for package python-gtk2 step seems to take an unusually long time on my laptop; and temporarily stopping the script yielded:
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| ^CFailed to find just-installed command 'guile' after pre-requisite installation. | |
| This very likely indicates that the pre-requisite installation failed | |
| to install one or more critical pre-requisites for Gnu Radio/UHD |
It seems that despite my best efforts to prepare things in advance, I ran out of disk space at that stage:
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| Checking for library libusb …Found library libusb | |
| Checking for library libboost …Found library libboost | |
| Checking for library libcppunit …Found library libcppunit | |
| Checking for library libguile …Found library libguile | |
| Checking for library libfftw …Found library libfftw | |
| Checking for library libgsl …Found library libgsl | |
| Done | |
| Fetching Gnu Radio via GIT…Could not find gnuradio/gnuradio-core after GIT checkout | |
| GIT checkout of Gnu Radio failed! |
Eventually, I resorted to running apt-get clean && apt-get autoclean, and moving some large files to an external disk, in order to free 1.5GB of 9.4GB; and re-ran the script, with more successful results:
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| Starting function uhd_build at: Thu Jul 19 13:43:39 BST 2012 | |
| Building UHD… | |
| Done building/installing UHD | |
| Done function uhd_build at: Thu Jul 19 14:00:07 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function firmware at: Thu Jul 19 14:00:07 BST 2012 | |
| Downloading images from: http://files.ettus.com/binaries/master_images/archive/uhd-images_003.004.001-109-g6ca39ad9.zip | |
| 6.94 MB/6.94 MB (100.00%) | |
| Images successfully installed to: /usr/local/share/uhd/images | |
| Done downloading firmware to /usr/local/share/uhd/images | |
| Done function firmware at: Thu Jul 19 14:00:19 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function gnuradio_build at: Thu Jul 19 14:00:19 BST 2012 | |
| /usr/local/lib already in ld.so.conf.d | |
| Doing ldconfig… | |
| Building Gnu Radio… | |
| …Doing cmake | |
| …Cmaking | |
| …Building | |
| Application asked to unregister timer 0x45000016 which is not registered in this thread. Fix application. | |
| …Installing | |
| Done building and installing Gnu Radio | |
| GRC freedesktop icons install …Done | |
| Done function gnuradio_build at: Thu Jul 19 14:41:05 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function rtl_build at: Thu Jul 19 14:41:05 BST 2012 | |
| Building rtl-sdr… | |
| Done building/installing rtl-sdr/gr-osmosdr | |
| Done function rtl_build at: Thu Jul 19 14:42:46 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function extras at: Thu Jul 19 14:42:46 BST 2012 | |
| Doing GIT checkout for extra module gr-baz | |
| Building extra module gr-baz | |
| Doing GIT checkout for extra module grextras | |
| Building extra module grextras | |
| Done function extras at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:02 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function mod_groups at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:02 BST 2012 | |
| ******************************************************************************** | |
| This script has just modified /etc/group to place your userid '('$USER')' into group 'usrp' | |
| In order for this change to take effect, you will need to log-out and log back | |
| in again. You will not be able to access your USRP1 device until you do this. | |
| If you wish to allow others on your system to use the USRP1 device, you will need to use: | |
| sudo usermod -a -G usrp userid | |
| For each userid you wish to allow access to the usrp | |
| ******************************************************************************** | |
| Further | |
| Done function mod_groups at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:03 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function mod_udev at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:03 BST 2012 | |
| Done function mod_udev at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:03 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function mod_sysctl at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:03 BST 2012 | |
| Applying updates to /etc/sysctl.conf | |
| Group 'usrp' now has real-time scheduling privileges | |
| You will need to log-out and back in again for this to | |
| take effect | |
| Done function mod_sysctl at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:03 BST 2012 | |
| Starting function pythonpath at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:03 BST 2012 | |
| ************************************************************ | |
| You should probably set your PYTHONPATH to: | |
| /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages | |
| Using: | |
| export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages | |
| in your .bashrc or equivalent file prior to attempting to run | |
| any Gnu Radio applications or Gnu Radio Companion. | |
| ************************************************************* | |
| Done function pythonpath at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:04 BST 2012 | |
| Done all functions at: Thu Jul 19 14:51:04 BST 2012 | |
| All Done | |
It seems that on a 64-bit Ubuntu installation, a full instance of the script’s working directory (containing all source code, and binaries) is about 520MB in size.
Notes on AirProbe installation
For readers wishing to install AirProbe using the instructions on the project’s Website, I recommend running sudo ln -s /usr/local/include/gruel/swig/gruel_common.i /usr/local/include/gnuradio/swig/ && ldconfig, after installing GNURadio, in order to avoid some frustrating bugs in various build scripts related to missing “Gruel”, and “SWIG”-related files.
Testing the result
Since this post is becoming rather long, and I’m unsatisfied with the content that I planned for this section, I’ll follow up with a second post related to testing the software post-installation, soon.
Tyson Key's Outpost 