Testing GNU Radio on the Raspberry Pi 2

Earlier this year the successor to the hugely popular Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi 2 was released. The Raspberry Pi 2 is a mini embedded computer that can run Linux.

Over on the RS Design Spark website Andrew Back has posted a tutorial showing how he installed GNU Radio and RTL-SDR on the Raspberry Pi 2. He also shows that the Raspberry Pi 2 runs the CPU intensive GNU Radio software well, utilizing 70% CPU when running osmocom_fft, a GNU Radio based spectrum analyzer. Andrew also installs and tests the gr-air-modes GNU Radio program which is an ADS-B receiver, finding that it also performed well with low CPU utilization.

Raspberry Pi 2 with an RTL-SDR Dongle Attached
Raspberry Pi 2 with an RTL-SDR Dongle Attached
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sallytech0103

Helpful and informative post about “GNU RADIO ON THE RASPBERRY PI 2”. I used this concept earlier but got an error. Now, after this article clear my all concept about this. Thanks for share a great info.

Seong-Hun.Choe

Thanks for your article. It is really helpful for me to build gnuradio system using raspberry pi. I found that gnu radio needs much cpu powers to operate smoothly. Can we get more cpu powers for gnu radio by building raspberry pi cluster system? I heard that 5 nodes system can be build with 300 USD. I would like to hear your opinion on it.

Spencer Allen

I could never get the kal to work with the rtl-sdr installation.
Tried to install gnuradio. Couldn’t get lusb to run. Got the info from rtl_test. The dongle reports a RTL2838.
Went to the clone step and github.com demands a password.
Hellup.

Grampa Mike

TR

I found that its lsusb

Tim

Need to add :

framebuffer_depth=32
framebuffer_ignore_alpha=1

to /boot/config.txt

Emily

Tried this with the Pi2 following all the steps and everything looked just fine. However it crashed hard running osmocom_fft after displaying the window. It indicated that it received an X window system error.

Some other info:
Using device #0 Realtek RTL2838UHIDIR SN: 00000001
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Exact sample rate is: 250000.000414 Hz
Using Volk machine: neon_hardfp_orc

Emily

Found some other comments and it will work. Follow the comments about changing the frame buffer.
FYI I’m running this on Version 8 (Jessie) so it’s good for a bit.

pel

Even better – it’s not 70% CPU. It’s 70% of *one core*. The Pi 2 has four!