Gqrx is an experimental AM, FM and SSB software defined receiver implemented using GNU Radio and the Qt GUI toolkit.

Currently it works on Linux and it can use the Funcube Dongle as input source.

Gqrx is very much work in progress and it is not yet ready for regular users.


1. Installation

Gqrx is distributed as a source package and precompiled binary package available at Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gqrx/

The binary package requires that you have the following libraries installed on your system:
  - libusb 1.0.8 or later
  - pulseaudio
  - Qt 4.7 or later
  - libfftw3
  - libgsl 1.14
  - Boost 1.42 or later (thread, datetime, system, filesystem)

In order to build gqrx from source you will aldo need:
  - gnuradio-core 3.5.0 or later

as well as the so called -dev or -devel packages for the above mentioned libraries. Everything except GNU Radio should be available in all Linux desktop distributions.

In order to build and install GNU Radio, you can try the build-gnuradio script by Marcus Leech, see
http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/InstallingGR#Using-the-build-gnuradio-script

or if you want to build it youself (experts only!), see
http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/BuildGuide
for platform specific instructions.

The build system is based on qmake and to build gqrx, load the gqrx.pro file into Qt Creator and click build (the hammer icon).

If the GNU Radio libraries have been installed into a non-standard location, e.g. /opt/gnuradio, Qt Creator may not be able to pick up the headers and libraries. Assuming that your PKG_CONFIG_PATH is set up correctly, you can work around this by launching Qt Creator from the terminal.


2. Configure Funcube Dongle

Whether you build gqrx from source or use the binary packages, you have to configure the FCD to be usable by non-root users. If you can already run qthid as regular user it is fine. If not, you need to create a udev rule. Create a udev file /etc/udev/rules.d/20-fcd.rules containing:

 SUBSYSTEMS=="usb" ATTRS{idVendor}=="04d8" ATTRS{idProduct}=="fb56" MODE:="0666" SYMLINK+="FCD"

(hint: open a terminal and type: sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/20-fcd.rules)

Reload the rules using "sudo udevadm control --reload-rules". You can then verify the setup using qthid: http://qthid.sf.net/


3. Using Gqrx

The current version only supports Funcube Dongle as input device and it will automatically detect the device. Therefore, you do not have to specify the input device.

Gqrx will use the default audio output device but you can select any other output devices from within Gqrx. You can also change the default output device in the desktop audio mixer.

If you have been using early versions of Gqrx you may have noticed that some features have disappeared. They have been disabled for now because they will not be fully implemented for the first release.


4. Reporting bugs and submitting patches

Not yet please. Wait until 2.0.


5. 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. These files come with a BSD license.

The icons are from the GNOME and Tango icon themes.