[Discuss-gnuradio] pyserial Wrapper

[John Malsbury]

Hello list,

Just shooting out a quick update.  I wrote a simple wrapper for pyserial to provide a serial port block for use with GNU Radio/GRC.  The objective here was to support a legacy command generation program that would typically output to an external, hardware-based transmitter via RS-232.   The user wanted to move the radio functionality into GNU Radio/USRP, but re-use the legacy application and interface to save a little work.  This block, combined with a socat generated virtual serial port permitted this migration of functionality.

This block uses grextras and message passing:

https://github.com/buoyboy/gr-pyserial/

Some possible use cases for this block:

1. Interfacing to legacy programs.  For example, you could use this block to interface with older amateur radio programs that talked to external TNCs on a serial port.  You can also connect to AX25-tools with this block [may require a KISS emulator block].  May be  a way to engage the amateur radio community in PHY evolution while keeping them in touch with familiar portions of their typical radio chain.
   
2. Outputting USRP GPSDO sensor data to mapping applications that typically use a serial port.  This would require some manipulation to generate standard NMEA commands - I plan on doing this here soon.
   
3. Deploying novel modems (i.e. in place of something like a MaxStream 900 MHz or xBee) with an RS-232 interface to other devices like Arduino's, etc. -  - perhaps with the E100?

I'm on the road and do not have hardware to test it thoroughly.  I've only done some cursory testing with virtual ports created with socat.

Cheers,
John Malsbury