[Discuss-gnuradio] throttle blocks and GUI responsiveness

[Dan Harasty]

Hello, all.

I'm still getting up to speed on gnuradio.... (does that make me a gnoob?  or maybe a gnuub?)...  ;-)

Anyway, to learn how to instrument a simple flowgraph with a wxPython GUI elements, I conceived of something simple to just play audible tones.  Like a simple monotone piano keyboard.

The good news is I found getting wxPython working was not as difficult as I thought it would be.

However, I've found that there is a pretty big lag between GUI button clicks and hearing the tone go on, off, or change pitch.  Say: about a second.

So I know enough GR to surmise that lots of samples are getting buffered, and that is the cause of the perceived lag.

I don't need micro-second level synchronizing between GUI button keypress events and tone output.... but getting it to under a tenth of a second would be good.

Some of you probably already know exactly what I need to do (and I look forward to your reply).  For the rest of you, I'll give you the blow-by-blow of what I tried, anyways.

The basic graph is the same as the "dialtone.py" example:

Tone 1 ---> + Adder ---> Audio Sync
Tone 2 ---> + 

Yes I said it was a "monotone" keyboard.  But what I mean by that is you can only play one NOTE at a time.  We'll assume the note has two components, and I need to add them.

1) So first I tried starting and stopping the graph upon keydown / keyup from the GUI.  I would set the tones' frequency value before starting the graphs.

Alas, this seemed to crash the graph.

2) So I figured in addition to setting the frequency, I would set the tone's amplitude.  Now I notice a big lag between keydown and tone starting, and keyup and tone stopping.

3) Ah... just add a throttle block, and control the amplitude after the throttle.

Tone 1 ---> + Adder ---> Throttle ---> Mult by Constant ---> Audio Sync
Tone 2 ---> +

I have keydown set the mult. const. to 1, and keyup set it to 0.

Keydown also sets the tones' frequencies.

OK, now my tone starts and stop in close sync with the GUI button.... but the upon keydown, I still hear a burst of the former frequency... again, because the samples have been buffered.

4) So next.... I got really confused, and wrote this.  I worked hard to think of where I could put the throttle block to ensure that there are no buffered samples at the "previous" frequency.  And, well, it doesn't seem there IS anyplace.  For example, I considered this:

Tone 1 ---> Throttle ---> + Adder ---> Mult by Constant ---> Audio Sync
Tone 2 ---> Throttle ---> +

but a) doesn't solve the problem that the tone blocks can still buffer lots of on the throttle inputs, and b) it gives me pause to have two throttle blocks (even at the same rate).

What's the "right" answer here?

-- Dan Harasty