[Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio and USRP2 on the Gumstix and BeagleBoard

[Steve Mcmahon]

Hello:

I am about to try to build and install GNU Radio 3.3.0 on a Gumstix Overo Water 
board. I have seen people on this list working with the BeagleBoard. I have 
some questions about this.

1. Both the Gumstix Overo Water and the BeagleBoard use a TI OMAP 3530, which 
uses an ARM Cortex A8 CPU. Since it contains a single-precision floating point 
unit, this should be adequate for running GNU Radio with floating point 
support, right?

Here's more information on the ARM Cortex A8 CPU and the Gumstix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a8.php
http://www.gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=228

2. Should I use the GNU Radio 3.3.0 tarball from the website, or should I get 
the very latest code from git? Which git branch should I use?

3. I know the USRP2 requires a 1Gb Ethernet link, but the Gumstix and 
BeagleBoard only support 100 Mbps Ethernet. Is there any way around this? I am 
only going to use it for low-bandwidth signals, say around 100e6/500 = 200 kHz 
sample rates. Does anyone know whether 1 Gb Ethernet will be supported on the 
Gumstix or BeagleBoard anytime within the next six months?

4. The Gumstix Overo Water board uses OpenEmbedded Linux. Can GNU Radio work 
under this distribution, or must I use Ubuntu on my Gumstix? (I don't even know 
whether the Gumstix can run anything other than OpenEmbedded)

Thanks a lot for your help!!

Steve McMahon