[Discuss-gnuradio] USRP2 control from Octave/Matlab, Tune Radio / Take Samples interface functions

[Moeller]

 Hi,

I'm using my own large Matlab toolbox for signal analysis, searching for
signals below noise floor. All is compatible with Octave.
It would be too much effort to port all that stuff to Python, so I want to keep
my working environment.

However, it would be interesting to achieve a coupling with the USRP2
for a live signal analysis.

I don't need a continuous stream operation. This could not be done in Octave.
But I would like to take signal snapshots in regular intervals with a receive()
function. I know I could call an external command to receive, save to file
and read back (as suggested in gnuradio). But this is not very elegant.

Now my idea: using a wrapper around
usrp2/host/apps/rx_streaming_samples.cc
to make it a Octave/Matlab function.

Now to my question: would it be possible to split the prodecures of
1. tuning the radio to a specific frequency and decimator setting
2. taking samples as a signal snapshot
into separate function calls ???
It would mean that the USRP2 is keeping the tuned settings.

So I would have these two functions:

usrp2_tune(frequency,decimation,gain,...)
  and
usrp2_rx(number_of_samples)
  possibly with a time trigger

Moeller