Install Gnuradio On Windows
GNURadio swig.exe GNURadio Not yet available Not yet available Not yet available Not yet available GPL: Python 2.7.10 Darn near everything: NA: base install: base install: base install. python-pcbuild.vc14.zip python27msvccompiler.7z: Python: libsodium 1.0.8 GNURadio NA: static dll. GNU Radio for Windows Subsystem for Linux 29 April, 2020. A key caveat in general for graphics and sound on WSL1 and WSL2 is the requirement for a custom setup to get graphics and sound. Networked SDRs and simulations can work with GNU Radio and GNU Radio Companion on Windows Subsystem for Linux. If you have Windows 10, you can use WSL and install GNURadio which works fine with PlutoSDR. You are just limited to the network backend which the driver provides. So you just supply the IP address of PlutoSDR (usually 192.168.2.1). Installing GNU Radio with Native Windows Tools. WARNING: This page is a work-in-progress. Two developers, Andrew Rose and Geof Nieboer, have taken up the challenge to get a windows native install complete. For the moment, this is note of their independent attempts to get it going.
Revised: February 5, 2020
The very first step for a new user is to review the GNU Radio web portal for authoritative information: GNU Radio Wiki. The GNU Radio developers have published a rich source of detailed information to help the new user to get started using GNU Radio. From that portal page one can link to installation instructions, tutorials, latest news, and in-depth information about the software development process. Refer to it frequently, since the content changes with the ongoing software development. Easy xml converter serial key.
Getting Started: GNU Radio Live SDR with Ubuntu OS
To get started with GNU Radio, a particularly appealing option is to use the GNU Radio Live SDR Environment:GNU Radio Live Environment. The Live Environment allows the user to implement GNU Radio without installing GNU Radio on the computer hard drive. The latest versions of the Ubuntu operating system and GNU Radio software are downloaded from the Internet to a storage medium (e.g. DVD or USB memory stick) as an executable file. Upon executing from the medium, the Live Environment opens in a complete Ubuntu operating system with GNU Radio application pre-installed. GNU Radio can be immediately executed to run from the computer memory at essentially full capability.
Installing and Maintaining GNU Radio
To install GNU Radio directly to a computer hard drive, installation from the official Source, Installation of GNU Radio is the best single source of information. This link provides all you need to know to install GNU Radio on Windows and Ubuntu operating systems.
Support for GNU Radio is available on-line via the ‘discuss-gnuradio’ message reflector: GNU Radio message reflector. Once you join the message reflector you can post questions on the reflector and the GNU Radio developers and users will respond via email. The reflector is very active and a rich source of information.
Operating System Recommendations
The most efficient and user-friendly approach to get full benefit of what GNU Radio has to offer is to implement GNU Radio in the Linux Ubuntu operating system. The GNU Radio developers develop and maintain GNU Radio in Ubuntu. Potential cross platform bugs and incompatibilities are avoided by adopting the same Ubuntu operating system that the developers use. GNU Radio is reported to operate on Windows and Mac OSX. There are challenges obtaining full implementation of GNU Radio with these operating systems .
Computer users unfamiliar with Linux operating systems shouldn’t be intimidated by using Linux Ubuntu operating system. Ubuntu has the look and feel and straight forward ease of use as MS Windows. The Ubuntu operating system is open source, downloadable via the Internet and can easily be installed in a separate hard drive partition if necessary. Installing Ubuntu via the Internet is straight forward and quick. The official Ubuntu website provides the latest downloadable Ubuntu versions and instructions for using Ubuntu: www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop.
GNU Radio is a dynamic application with version updates on an irregular but frequent basis. It is important to keep abreast of the changes via the web portal and learn to update the application re-using the build-gnuradio script as necessary. Follow the ‘Latest news’ for updates and other information:
GNU Radio home page.
Computer Hardware Recommendations
A capable computer is necessary to use GNU Radio to its full real-time DSP potential. The developers recommend a dual-core CPU, preferably an i5 or i7 level. The CPU requirement for simple simulation DSPs are less demanding. The higher levels of CPU capacity are necessary for satisfying real time SDR oriented DSPs.Single core and early Core duo CPUs lack the speed and CPU capacity for many ham DSPs. See GNU Radio work station for additional information on GNU Radio operation, maintenance, and computer capability.
Link to Terms and Abbreviations: Terms and Abbreviations
Home Page link: Home Page
- 1Windows Installation
- 1.3Installation Options
Current Windows Status[edit]
Binary installers for 64-bit Windows 7/8/10 are now available here. These include all dependencies for Windows, a custom python distro, commonly used SDR drivers, and several OOT blocks.
There is also an Anaconda based Conda package available for Windows. Conda is a full package manger like Linux's apt-get or Mac's Homebrew and will automatically pull in all needed dependencies for a requested package. Conda packages will also work with the smaller disk footprint version of Anaconda known as MiniConda. Anaconda is a full python scientific computing environment that incudes many scientific libraries and development tools, while MiniConda is just the barebones python install plus the Conda package manager. Both Anaconda and mini-conda are able to create stand alone 'environment' configurations that resolve dependency version confits common with python. (as of 1 December 2020 this is the most uptodate binary install option). This build also include soa, RDS, OsmoSDR and mapper OoT modules.
There is also a build available at [1] that includes GnuRadio, Pothos, CubicSDK and other tools. This option has historically been updated about once or twice per year.
Installing core GNU Radio and USRP on Windows is becoming more routine. Many OoT modules may still require compiling locally. Please report any success or failures. Patches and enhancements are especially welcome!
Windows Porting Issues[edit]
Considerable effort has been put into making the GNU Radio code portable among various operating systems, but there are several reasons why it cannot be 'simply' compiled and run under Windows:
- The build and install procecures are based on Linux scripts and tools
- Several third-party libraries are used, each with its own, often system-dependent, installation procedure
- Most GNU Radio applications must interface to hardware (e.g., a sound card or USRP) which require system-dependent drivers and installation procedures
- Because GNU Radio is written as an extension to Python, there are potential problems on Windows if different runtime libraries are used for GNU Radio and Python
The following sections show how these issues can be addressed.
Installation Options[edit]
GNU Radio is designed to be flexible. It has a number of modules, capabilities, and options that can be enabled or disabled to suit the needs of the user, and the user can add custom blocks or modules to the system.
To support this flexibility, it comes with a set of files and scripts to be used with GNU software build tools (sh, make, autoconf, automake, etc.). These tools use Linux-like commands and filenames that are not normally available on Windows systems.
Fortunately, we are not the first to face this problem, and several solutions exist. These are presented in order of increasing difficulty:
Building on Windows with Native Tools[edit]
Ettus Application note [2] describes how to build from source. Similar is a post at [3] for OOT modules.
Powershell scripts are now available at https://www.github.com/gnieboer/gnuradio_windows_build_scripts that fully automate the build process for GNURadio 3.7.9.2+. A few build dependencies are required (MSVC 2015, Git, Doxygen, CMake, Perl, Wix) but all are free. The script has two options:
- Build all dependencies from source (including python itself)
- Download a prebuilt custom dependency package and then build only GNURadio and a few OOT modules on top.
The binary installers described above are built with these scripts. They ensure that all dependencies are built with the same toolchain against the same runtime libraries, and handle the patches and configuration 'tweaks' needed to build them on Windows.
If option 1 is desired, note that to build scipy, the non-free Intel Fortran compiler is required, gfortran cannot build objects that can link with MSVC C objects. If you do not have said compiler, the scripts will download pre-compiled wheels instead.
More information on the build process is available on the GitHub repo readme, and also at http://www.gcndevelopment.com/gnuradio.
GNURadio 3.6 has also been compiled on Windows using native tools as well (see http://voltronics.blogspot.com/2013/01/gnu-radio-windows-build-guide.html and https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2013-08/msg00284.html)
Install Gnu Radio On Windows 10
More helpful tips on dependency version information have been reported:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2013-12/msg00497.html
MinGW/MSYS[edit]
MinGW (http://www.mingw.org/) provides GNU compilers and Window-specific header files for compiling native Windows applications.
MSYS (http://www.mingw.org/msys.shtml) is a companion set of Linux-like commands, shell, and build tools.
MinGW does not include a Linux programming interface; programs should be smaller and faster than with Cygwin (in theory), but will require more Windows-specific code.
MSYS is intended primarily as a build environment, making it more compact than Cygwin.
Because there is no Linux API emulation, GNU Radio built with MinGW should be used with standard Windows versions of Python and the third-party libraries.
MinGW does not provide as much support as Cygwin for installing third-party libraries, but in many cases precompiled binaries are available.
For detailed installation instructions using MinGW and MSYS see Installing GNU Radio with MinGW.
Cygwin[edit]
Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com/) is a Linux-like environment for Windows.
It provides the Linux-like shell, file naming, and build tools we need and also makes it easy to install many of the third-party libraries required by GNU Radio. It also provides a Linux programming interface (API); this is not required by GNU Radio, but it lets us use the better-tested Linux versions of some functions.
Because the Linux API uses its own C runtime library, it is best to use Cygwin versions of Python and the third-party libraries when building GNU Radio with Cygwin.
For detailed installation instructions using Cygwin see Installing GNU Radio with Cygwin.
Chocolatey[edit]
To quote from the [ https://chocolatey.org/ Chocolately homepage]: Chocolatey NuGet is a Machine Package Manager, somewhat like apt-get, but built with Windows in mind..
There are packages for gnuradio (and it's dependencies) available in a separate repository (currently the best known source is: https://github.com/ariovistus/chocolatey-packages)
To install, open an Administrative command line session and run:
Now you need to install a source which has the recipes for gnuradio and dependants. The easiest method is to clone the chocolately-packages from the github repository listed above (https://github.com/ariovistus/chocolatey-packages), then add the local source from within an Administrative command line session:
Create the numpy package:
Create the gnuradio package:
Now install the gnuradio package:
Follow the command prompts.
WSL Ubuntu[edit]
Enable WSL from windows features.
Install Gnuradio On Windows 10
Install Ubuntu from Microsoft Store.
Using the Ubuntu terminal, install gnuradio as you would on linux [4]
Install additional package 'libgtk-3-dev'
Install Xming [5] as WSL do not come with X server.
Launch Xming (default settings would do)
Edit bashrc to setup the display by adding the following line at the bottom of the file
Restart the Ubuntu terminal and run
Known Windows Build Issues[edit]
So far, we have workarounds for all reported problems:
- I got the following error after a clean install 'This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.'. I fixed this by finding qwindows.dll on my PC (for me it was in C:Program FilesGNURadio-3.8binplatforms), creating a new directory C:Program FilesGNURadio-3.8binpluginsplatforms, and copying the 4 DLLs to C:Program FilesGNURadio-3.8binpluginsplatforms (I had to create the '..pluginsplatforms' sub-directory). I'm sure there's a more elegant fix, but this seems to work.