Installing drivers and support for the SDRplay RSP1A and HackRF One on a Raspberry Pi

On a newly installed Raspberry Pi OS operating system.

There seems to be little Linux support for SDRplay devices outside of the convenient images from SDRplay with preinstalled software. That software was limited and out of date as of this writing. I have spent quite a bit of time getting an up to date system on which to install the latest Linux SDR software. In addition, many of the packages supplied by Raspberry Pi are not current. Here is what I did to get mine to work. I hope this helps you. These procedures may work for other SDR hardware except for the drivers and device specific items.

Note: I have included support for both for the SDRplay RSP1A and the HackRF One. You will only need to install support for the device(s) that you have, in these procedures.

Install Raspberry Pi OS

Download the latest 32 bit Raspberry Pi OS image here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/operating-systems/#raspberry-pi-os-32-bit
This procedure is developed for version 2021-03-04-raspios-buster-armhf. This procedure may not be appropriate for the next major version.
Install the image on a 32 GB or larger SD card. Use your favorite image program. I used Balena Etcher on Windows. For more help extracting and flashing the image, look on the image help page.
Boot the image in your Raspberry Pi. Allow it to go through the setup procedure and update itself to the latest version.
I suggest turning off screen blanking as this will halt your SDR reception.
I basically included prerequisites that were not found on my system. However, there may be a few packages listed that are already installed. This is OK. If the Qt5 version is ver. 5.12 or later or if GNU Radio is ver. 3.8, you can use those instead of the equivalent steps in this procedure.

Before you begin

Sometimes the packages that you need are upgraded and the old ones are removed from the repository. This should have been taken care of if you installed a recent operating system in the preceding steps, but if it has been a day or more, or you get a 404 Not Found error you need to update your package system:
```
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
```

Uninstall:

These packages are used by other software and they may be uninstalled or rendered useless by this. You may have to reinstall them.

Qt 5.11.3
- Removing Qt5 will also remove all dependent packages including VLC
- Using Add / Remove Software, uncheck all QT5 items that refer to version 5.11
- You can also use sudo apt autoremove libqt5core5a* but you should check to see that all of the packages were removed.
GNU Radio 3.7 (probably not installed)
- Using Add / Remove Software, uncheck all items that refer to gnuradio version 3.7

Install:

Qt 5 5.15.2

Prerequisites

sudo apt install libdouble-conversion1 libdouble-conversion-dev
sudo apt install libxi-dev libxcb*
sudo apt install libxkbcommon-x11-0 libxkbcommon-x11-dev

Download qt5-opengl-dev_5.15.2_armhf.deb

Give everyone View and Execute permission

# Change to the directory containing the downloads
cd ~/
sudo apt install ./qt5-opengl-dev_5.15.2_armhf.deb # This installs Qt5 in /usr/lib/qt5.15.2
export QT_SELECT=qt5.15.2-opengl
qmake --version # Check version

# check this: sudo mousepad /etc/ld.so.conf.d/Qt5.conf
sudo ldconfig

Insert into the new file: /usr/lib/qt5.15.2/lib

Save the file.

sudo mousepad ~/.profile
# Add these lines to the end of the file and save.
PATH=/usr/lib/qt5.15.2/bin:$PATH
export PATH

Qt Creator for Qt 4.14.1

Download qt5-opengl-qtcreator_4.14.1_armhf.deb

Give everyone View and Execute permission

sudo apt install ./qt5-opengl-qtcreator_4.14.1_armhf.deb 
# Check install path: This installs qtcreator in /usr/lib/qt5.15.2/bin/
sudo ldconfig

Uninstall cmake.

sudo apt remove cmake
# Check that Qt Creator is not uninstalled.

reboot

cmake
- Prerequisite
```
sudo apt install libssl-dev
```
- Download the latest archive from https://cmake.org/download/ to a directory such as your home directory.
- Extract the archive, for example, cmake-3.19.2.tar.gz. This procedure assumes your home directory. For other versions, change the version in the commands.
```
cd ~/
tar -zxvf cmake-3.19.2.tar.gz
cd cmake-3.19.2
./bootstrap
make -j 4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
```
- reboot

PyQt5 5.15.4

Install sip and PyQt-builder

sudo python3 -m pip install sip
sudo python3 -m pip install PyQt-builder

Install PyQt5
```
pip3 install pyqt5-sip
```

SDRplay API Installation

Prerequisites

sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev libfftw3-3 libfftw3-dev

# Create a new file:
sudo mousepad /etc/udev/rules.d/66-mirics.rules

Paste this line into 66-mirics.rules file opened in the previous step:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device",ATTRS{idVendor}=="1df7",ATTRS{idProduct}=="2500",MODE:="0666"

Save the file. Once this file is in place you should reset the udev system by typing:
```
sudo service udev restart
```

Download API 3.07 or later, RSP Control Library + Driver from https://www.sdrplay.com/downloads/

cd /home/pi/Downloads # or wherever you downloaded the file
chmod 755 SDRplay_RSP_API-ARM32-3.07.2.run
sudo ./SDRplay_RSP_API-ARM32-3.07.2.run
sudo ldconfig

To stop and start the API service, use the following commands...
```
sudo systemctl stop sdrplay
sudo systemctl start sdrplay
```
Type lsusb. Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1df7:3000 should be displayed.

HackRF One installation

Prerequisites
If you did not install these for SDRplay:

sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev libfftw3-3 libfftw3-dev

Install

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf
cd hackrf/host
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j 4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

You may need to update the firmware to match the version of the host tools. As of this writing, the latest firmware version was 2018.01.1

hackrf_info

# If you see "Firmware Version: 2018.01.1 (API:1.02)", then it is up to date.

# Transfer rate test:
hackrf_transfer -r /dev/null -s 21500000

#Test sending data:
hackrf_transfer -t /dev/zero

If the tests fail with hackrf_open() failed: Access denied (insufficient permissions) (-1000), reboot and try again.

GNU Radio 3.8.2

Prerequisites

Open Add / Remove Software and ensure that volk, libvolk 1.4 or newer along with the bin and dev packages are checked. If necessary, check them and click Apply.
In Add / Remove Software ensure that libcodec2, libcodec2-dev, libfftw3 and libfftw3-dev are installed.

If you install the list of prerequisites listed on the GNU Radio web site, be careful not to install the Qt5 packages as they will be the old ver. 5.11
Install these prerequisites (some may already be installed).

sudo apt install libboost-all-dev libgmp-dev swig python3-requests python3-ruamel.yaml python3-setuptools python3-numpy python3-mako python3-sphinx python3-lxml doxygen libsdl1.2-dev libgsl-dev libzmq3-dev python3-yaml python3-click python3-click-plugins python3-zmq python3-scipy libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev python-docutils liborc-0.4-0 liborc-0.4-dev python3-gi-cairo python3-waitress liblog4cpp5-dev liblog4cpp5v5
# Check that Codec2 is installed.
# For soapySDR, etc.:
sudo apt install osspd osspd-pulseaudio sudo osspd-alsa libcppunit-dev

Install UHD
You may be able use the UHD packages in Add / Remove Software, but make sure it does not install GNU Radio 3.7. Building this from source will take a long time.

cd ~/
git clone git://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd.git
cd ~/uhd
# git tag -l # list versions available
git checkout v3.15.0.0
cd host
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DNEON_SIMD_ENABLE=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ../
make -j4
make test
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

Install UHD FPGA images

sudo uhd_images_downloader
cd ~/uhd/host/utils
sudo cp uhd-usrp.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger
# The installation of UHD is now complete. At this point, connect the USRP to the host computer and run:
uhd_usrp_probe

Installing GNU Radio 3.8 version, 3.8.2. The latest version is 3.9 released on 1/17/2021.

The next steps will take two or more hours. Be patient. The terminal does show the progress.
These steps are based on the install instructions at https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/InstallingGR#From_Source

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/gnuradio/gnuradio.git
cd gnuradio
# In the following command, change maint-3.8 to some other branch or tag if you want to build a different version of GNU Radio;
git checkout maint-3.8
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python3 ../

# check cmake the output for codec2/freedv entries - freedv_api.h
# For the make command, if you want to use 4 CPU cores during the build add the -j4 flag. To use 8 do -j8, to use 1 leave out the -j flag.
make -j4
sudo make install

# Show version
gnuradio-config-info -v

sudo mousepad ~/.profile
#add this  export command to the end of the file or to any existing PYTHONPATH line. Save changes to make the variables permanent.
export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/lib/python3/dist-packages:$PYTHONPATH

Create a file named /etc/ld.so.conf.d/gnuradio.conf containing: /usr/local/lib

sudo mousepad /etc/ld.so.conf.d/gnuradio.conf
# insert the line: /usr/local/lib
# Save the file

sudo ldconfig

reboot

Build SoapySDR

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDR.git
cd SoapySDR
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

Install the Soapy SDR module for SDRPlay

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDRPlay.git
cd SoapySDRPlay
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

# Type these commands. If your SDR is listed, the hardest work is done!
SoapySDRUtil --info
SoapySDRUtil --probe="driver=sdrplay"

Install the Soapy SDR module for HackRF

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/pothosware/SoapyHackRF.git
cd SoapyHackRF
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

# Type this command. Check that your SDR is listed and the details are correct.
SoapySDRUtil --probe="driver=hackrf"

Alternate gr-osmosdr module for SDRplay API 3.x - supports RSPduo (all modes) and RSPdx
Please note that this code is still experimental. The installer does find SDRplay and Soapy. OsmoSDR does appear in GNU Radio Companion, no reference to SDRplay or Soapy.
```
cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/fventuri/gr-osmosdr.git
cd gr-osmosdr/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DENABLE_NONFREE=TRUE
```
Under Gnuradio enabled components in the terminal text, check that SDRplay RSP (NONFREE) and SoapySDR support are listed.
```
make -j4
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
```
Run GNU Radio Companion and check that OsmoSDR is in the tree on the right side of the window.
If Qt5 5.11 reappears in Add / Remove Software, remove all, including 5.12 and reinstall 5.12 as above.
If you find that the operating system only has mono audio:
```
sudo featherpad /usr/share/pulseaudio/alsa-mixer/profile-sets/default.conf
```
- Comment out each line in the [Mapping analog-mono] section with a ";" at the beginning of the line.
- Save the file and reboot.
VLC media player is removed by this installation.

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