Gqrx

Gqrx is an experimental software defined radio receiver implemented using GNU Radio and the Qt GUI toolkit. Currently it works on Linux and Mac and supports the following devices:

• Funcube Dongle Pro and Pro+
• RTL2832U-based DVB-T dongles (rtlsdr via USB and TCP)
• OsmoSDR
• USRP
• HackRF
• Nuand bladeRF
• RFspace SDR-IQ, SDR-IP and NetSDR
• Airspy
• any other device supported by the gr-osmosdr library

Gqrx can operate as a traditional AM/FM/SSB receiver with audio output or as an FFT-only instrument.

Download

Gqrx is distributed as source code package and binaries for Linux. Mac support is avaialble through macports. Please see http://gqrx.dk/download for a list of official and third party download resources.

Usage

It is recommended to run the "volk_profile" gnuradio utility before running gqrx in order to enable processor specific optimisations.

The first time you start gqrx it will open a device configuration dialog. Supported devices that are connected to the computer are discovered automatically and you can select any of them in the drop-down list.

If you don't see your device listed in the drop-down list it could be because:

• The driver has not included in a binary distribution
• The udev rule has not been properly configured
• Linux kernel driver is blocking access to the device

You can test your device first with rtl_test, qthid, or uhd_usrp_probe that come with the respective packages.

Gqrx supports multiple configurations and sessions if you have several devices or if you want to use the same device under different configurations. You can load a configuration from the GUI or using the -c command line argument. See "gqrx --help" for a complete list of command line arguments.

Tutorials and howtos are being written and published on the website http://gqrx.dk/

Known problems

See the bug tracker on Github: https://github.com/csete/gqrx/issues

Getting help and reporting bugs

There is now a Google group for discussing anything related to Gqrx: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gqrx This includes getting help with installation and troubleshooting. Please remember to provide detailed description of your problem, your setup, what steps you followed, etc.

Installation from source

The source code is hosted on Github: https://github.com/csete/gqrx

To compile gqrx from source you need the following dependencies:

• cmake version >= 3.2.0 from https://cmake.org/download/
• GNU Radio 3.7 with the following components:
  • gnuradio-runtime
  • gnuradio-analog
  • gnuradio-digital
  • gnuradio-blocks
  • gnuradio-filter
  • gnuradio-fft
  • gnuradio-audio
• The gr-iqbalance library (optional)
• At least one of:
  • Funcube Dongle Pro driver via gnuradio-fcd
  • UHD driver via gnuradio-uhd
  • Funcube Dongle Pro+ driver from https://github.com/dl1ksv/gr-fcdproplus
  • RTL-SDR driver from http://cgit.osmocom.org/cgit/rtl-sdr/
  • OsmoSDR driver from http://cgit.osmocom.org/cgit/osmo-sdr/
  • HackRF Jawbreaker driver from http://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/
• gnuradio-osmosdr from http://cgit.osmocom.org/cgit/gr-osmosdr/
• pulseaudio (Linux only and optional)
• Qt 4.7 or later with the following components:
  • Core
  • GUI
  • Network
  • Widgets (Qt 5 only)
  • Svg (runtime only)

Gqrx comes with a simple cmake build setup. It can be compiled from within Qt Creator or in a terminal:

For command line builds:

$ git clone https://github.com/csete/gqrx.git gqrx.git
$ cd gqrx.git
$ mkdir -p builds/cl
$ cd builds/cl
$ cmake ../..
$ make -j4

Replace the '-j4' with the number of CPU cores in your machine.

For Qt Creator builds:

$ git clone https://github.com/csete/gqrx.git gqrx.git
$ cd gqrx.git
$ mkdir -p builds/creator
Start Qt Creator
Open gqrx.git/CMakeLists.txt file
At the dialog asking for build location, select gqrx.git/builds/creator
click continue
If asked to choose cmake executable, do so
click continue
click the run cmake button
click done
optionally, on the Projects page, under Build Steps/Make/Additional arguments,
	enter -j4 (replacing 4 with the number of cores in your CPU).
Use Qt Creator as before

To build in various mode, pass -DBUILDTYPE={typeOfBuild} to cmake. Supported build types are: Debug GProf Valgrind Release (This is currently disabled due to a conflict with log4cpp DEBUG #define)

Credits and License

Gqrx is designed and written by Alexandru Csete OZ9AEC, and it is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Some of the source files were adopted from Cutesdr by Moe Weatley and these come with a Simplified BSD license.

Following people and organisations have contributed to gqrx:

TODO: Credits for bookmarks

Alex Grinkov:

• FM stereo demodulator.

Anthony Willard:

• Various fixes and improvements

Bastian Bloessl: Pavel Stano:

• RDS support via gr-rds.

Chris Kuethe:

• Fractional PPM correction.

Christian Lindner DL2VCL: Stefano Leucci:

• Bookmarks implementation.

Elias Önal:

• Building Gqrx on Mac OS X.
• Crash recovery dialog.

Frank Brickle, AB2KT: Bob McGwier, N4HY:

• Noise blanker (from dttsp).

Göran Weinholt, SA6CJK:

• Various GUI improvements.

Jiří Pinkava:

• Port to gnuradio 3.7 API.

Kobra @ Xiatek:

• Auto squelch.

Michael Dickens:

• Bugfixes on OSX.

Moe Weatley:

• FFT plotter and waterfall.
• Frequency selector.
• Signal strength indicator.
• AGC

Nadeem Hasan:

• Bug fixes.

Nokia:

• QtColorPicker widget.

Stefano Leucci:

• Peak detection and hold for the FFT plot.

Timothy Reaves:

• UI layout fixes for Mac.
• cmake build files

Vesa Solonen:

• DC removal in AM demodulator.

Vincent Pelletier

• Initial work on the horizontal zooming / scrolling.

Will Scales

• Bug fixes.

Also thanks to Volker Schroer and Alexey Bazhin for bringing Funcube Dongle Pro+ support to GNU Radio and Gqrx.

Some of the icons are from the GNOME and Tango icon themes. The scope.svg icon is based on the utilities-system-monitor.svg icon from the Mint-X icon theme licensed under GNU GPL.

Let me know if somebody or someting is missing from the list!

Alex OZ9AEC