[Discuss-gnuradio] Video tutorial series & cross-platform BorIP server/source+sink blocks

[Balint Seeber]

Dear list,

 

Since I started playing with GR, I’ve accumulated a number of flowgraphs where each one was a small experiment to better understand some aspect of SDR/DSP. I thought I would share them in the form of a video tutorial series, of which I have completed the first three parts. My motivation is to provide another form of (semi-)structured guide that the many new-comers to SDR can hopefully learn from. This is certainly an exciting time to be in this field! I’m not sure how many more parts I’ll put together, but I have plenty more flowgraphs (right up to blind signal analysis of PSK/OFDM and demodulating satellite downlinks).

 

The playlist (so far) can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL618122BD66C8B3C4

 

If you get a chance to watch any of it, please let me know what you think – comments are welcome!

 

Also, I’ve completed the BorIP server for Linux & Mac, which leverages the power for GR to access hardware and do DSP (this is different from the Windows version which is self-contained). My goal was to make the design as general as possible, and to that end you can create your own server interfaces simply by creating a compatible flowgraph in GRC – no separate coding is required! The server dynamically loads flowgraphs (the Python code generated by GRC) based on the Device Hint supplied from the client. You can also embed the server in an existing flowgraph (instead of running it on the commandline) by using the new BorIP Sink block in GRC.

 

Initial documentation can be found here: http://wiki.spench.net/wiki/BorIP_Server

 

There is a detailed video with all the ways of using it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46VbuViPKt4

And a short demo on Mac OS X: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=492Ub66IsRA

 

The control aspects could be achieved in a similar way using the XMLRPC server (for example), but the BorIP blocks/server and compatible clients (Source Block, ExtIO plugin for Windows) should make basic signal reception ‘just work’.

 

The samples from the tutorials, as well as the BorIP code, are all in the gr-baz module: http://wiki.spench.net/wiki/gr-baz

 

Hope you find it useful.

 

Kind regards,

Balint @spenchdotnet