homebrew-gnuradio

This is a collection of Homebrew recipes that makes it easier to get GNU Radio, GQRX, HackRF, RTL-SDR and BladeRF running on OS X.

Installation

These steps have been tested on Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10 with Apple Command Line Tools 6.1.0.

• Install Homebrew if you haven't already

  ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

  or if you already have it installed, update and upgrade everything:

  brew update
  brew upgrade

• After that run the following commands to make sure you have no issues with your setup, cleanup all warnings

  brew doctor

• Add this line to your profile (ie ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshenv) and reload your profile (source ~/.profile or exec $SHELL)

  export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH

• Install the python package prerequisites

  brew install python gcc swig

• Install command line tools for XCode

  xcode-select --install

• Install the prerequisite python packages

  pip install numpy Cheetah lxml
  pip install https://github.com/scipy/scipy/archive/v0.12.0.tar.gz
  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/X11/lib/pkgconfig" 
  pip install https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/matplotlib/matplotlib/matplotlib-1.2.1/matplotlib-1.2.1.tar.gz

• Install wxmac with python bindings

  brew install wxpython

• Install gnuradio

  brew tap andresv/homebrew-gnuradio
  brew install gnuradio --with-qt

• [optional] install hackrf libraries, so gr-osmosdr detects it during build

  brew install hackrf --HEAD

• [optional] install bladerf libraries, so gr-osmosdr detects it during build

  brew install bladerf

• [optional] install rtlsdr libraries, so gr-osmosdr detects it during build

  brew install rtlsdr --HEAD

• Install blocks that are needed to connect real hardware (rtl-sdr, hackrf, bladerf) to gnuradio

  brew install gr-osmosdr gr-baz --HEAD

• Create the ~/.gnuradio/config.conf config file for custom block support:

  mkdir ~/.gnuradio
  vim ~/.gnuradio/config.conf

  Add these lines into file otherwise gnuradio is unable to locate blocks from gr-osmosdr and gr-baz:

  [grc]
  local_blocks_path=/usr/local/share/gnuradio/grc/blocks

  gnuradio-companion shows lot of duplication warnings after that - this is normal. Everything is installed correctly if osmocom Source and RTL-SDR Source blocks are available inside GNU Radio Companion.

• Install Gqrx for scanning frequencies and viewing waterfall

  brew install gqrx --HEAD
  brew linkapps

  Gqrx is installed under Applications and can be started as usual Mac application.

Configure it to use the HackRF. Probably best to start the sample rate at 1000000 until you know how much your system can handle. Everything should now be working. It is time to give it a try! Below are some of the programs you can try:

gnuradio-companion
osmocom_fft -a hackrf

Troubleshooting

• Matplotlib

  If you get the following type of errors installing matplotlib:

  error: expected identifier or '(' before '^' token

  Try the following:

  export CC=clang
  export CXX=clang++
  export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/X11/lib"
  export CFLAGS="-I/usr/X11/include -I/usr/X11/include/freetype2"

  From Stackoverflow via @savant42

• gnuradio-companion

  Probably gr-baz.rb is built against System's Python if gnuradio-companion crashes with the following error:

  Warning: Block with key "xmlrpc_server" already exists.
  Ignoring: /usr/local/Cellar/gnuradio/3.7.5.1/share/gnuradio/grc/blocks/xmlrpc_server.xml
  Fatal Python error: PyThreadState_Get: no current thread
  Abort trap: 6

  I had this error, now it is fixed with this commit.

• Uninstall Homebrew If you think you have some cruftiness with Homebrew, this Gist will completely uninstall Homebrew and any libraries it may have installed. Of course if you are using Homebrew for other things you could make a mess of your life.

  This Gist is from the Homebrew FAQ

  Then finish the clean-up with these steps

  rm -rf /usr/local/Cellar /usr/local/.git && brew cleanup
  rm -rf /Library/Caches/Homebrew
  rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages