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bladeRF Linux Applications

This directory contains applications that utilize libbladeRF. Currently, this consists of a command-line bladeRF-cli tool intended to aid in development and testing. This tool can be used in a batch mode with single, simple operations but the real power is when it is compiled with an interactive shell.

Dependencies

libtecla can be installed via most package managers. Check your distribution for support.

Building

  1. Run make or make DEBUG=y (to build with debug symbols)
  2. Note that the CLI program has been created: bin/bladeRF-cli

By default, bladeRF-cli uses libtecla to provide an interactive console. To disable this, include INTERACTIVE=n:

make INTERACTIVE=n

Basic Usage

For usage information, run:

./bladeRF-cli --help

If you encounter issues and ask folks on IRC or in the forum assistance, it's always helpful to note the CLI version:

./bladeRF-cli --version

If only one device is connected, the -d option is not needed. The CLI will find and open the attached device. This option is required if multiple devices are connected. For the sake of completeness, the following examples will include this command line option.

Load the FPGA and enter interactive mode:

./bladeRF-cli -d /dev/bladerf0 -l /path/to/fpga.rbf

Pass in a script to run to setup a device in a specific way, and then interactive mode.

./bladeRF-cli -d /dev/bladerf0 -s setup.txt

Load the FPGA, setup the device, but to do not enter interactive mode:

./bladeRF-cli -d /dev/bladerf0 -l /path/to/fpga.rbf -s setup.txt -b

Some Useful Interactive Commands

The help command prints out the top level commands that are available. Using help <cmd> gives a more detailed help on that command.

The most useful control commands are peek and poke for setting registers at a very basic level and print and set for performing system level tasks like setting gains, frequency, bandwidth or sample rate.

The rx and tx commands allow data to be transmitted and received in the background, while the interactive console remains in the foreground.

rx config and tx config are used to configure and view various RX and TX parameters. Note that rx and tx is a supported shorthand for viewing the RX/TX configuration. See help rx and help tx for more information about these parameters. Below are a few examples:

Receive 10,000 samples to a binary file (host endianness):

rx config file=samples.bin format=bin n=10000
rx start

rx or rx config may be used to view the RX task status. When it no longer reports "Running", the samples should be available in the file. Note that for larger sample rate or small values of n, the RX task may finish before you can enter the rx command to view its state.

Receive 4096 samples to a CSV file:

rx config file=samples.csv format=csv n=4096
rx start

Files can also be transmitted:

tx config file=samples.bin
tx start

The transmission of the file can be repeated a number of times, with a configurable delay (microseconds) between each repetition:

tx config file=samples.bin repeat=100 delay=10000
tx start

While format=csv is valid for tx, note that the CLI will first convert the CSV to a temporary binary file:

bladeRF&gt; tx config file=samples.txt format=csv repeat=10 delay=10000000
bladeRF&gt; tx start

Converted CSV file to binary file. Using /tmp/bladeRF-ddLNmc
Note that this program will not delete the temporary file.

bladeRF&gt; tx

    State: Running
    File: /tmp/bladeRF-ddLNmc
    Format: C16, Binary (Little Endian)
    Repeat: 10 iterations
    Repeat delay: 10000000 us

Creating a setup.txt

It was useful in debugging to get into a known state easily and reproducibly. We created a setup.txt file which can be provided via the -s command line option.

Below is an example setup.txt:

set frequency 1000000000  # Tune to 1 GHz on both RX and TX
set samplerate 10000000   # Sample @ 10 MHz
set bandwidth 28000000    # 28 MHz bandwidth

# Configure gains
set lnagain bypass
set txvga1 -14
set txvga2 20
set rxvga1 20
set rxvga2 20

# Print out a few settings

print frequency
print samplerate
print bandwidth