Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio on Android

[Vijay Galbaransingh]

Hi guys,

I am attempting to write an OOT module to be implemented on Android and am 
finding myself out of my depth here.

As a first step I was able to make and execute my flowgraph on my android 
device following the instructions on the wiki, using a file sink to store my 
end result (demodulated string.)

Now I would like to create my own sink which takes char inputs and updates a 
TextView object as they are ‘spat out’ by the flowgraph. I followed the 
general instructions on the wiki for coding an OOT module/object, so 
gr_modtool generated all the boiler plate code and I have modified it 
accordingly.

Where I am hitting an issue is that I must pass JNIEnv* and jobject 
arguments to my make (hence impl) functions in order to interact with the 
TextView object in my work function… but when I try to build the module I 
get the following error for example: “error: 'JNIEnv' has not been declared”, 
and similarly for all the jobject, jclass, and jmethodID occurrences. It 
would seem make doesn’t know how to find the JNI libraries (and I’m guessing 
volk is missing too,) and I’m unsure how to tell it where to look. Any 
thoughts? Or is there a smarter / less roundabout way altogether to display 
my flowgraph output in my Android activity?

Thanks,
Vijay

From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Tom 
Rondeau
Sent: March-19-15 07:36
To: Vijay Galbaransingh
Cc: GNURadio Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio on Android

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 3:28 AM, Vijay Galbaransingh <address@hidden> wrote:
Tom,

As you expected, disabling buffering on the file sink did not have any
effect. I have fixed the issue though by making two changes to
opensl_source_impl.cc:
1) change scale_factor to 32768 (1/2^14 doesn't make sense, it causes
clipping because the volk conversion method divides by scale_factor.)
2) change buffer size (d_size) to 8k (2k was too small, tested 32/44.1/48kHz
on Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 2012 version.) Without this change the recorded audio
will be very choppy (dropped samples?)

Vijay

Ah, ok, that makes sense. I think I was just playing around with those 
parameters and must have checked them in at that state.

I'll make those updates to the repo.

Thanks.
Tom



From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Tom
Rondeau
Sent: March-18-15 07:11
To: Vijay Galbaransingh
Cc: GNURadio Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio on Android

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 1:46 AM, Vijay Galbaransingh <address@hidden> wrote:
Tom,

What kind of sample rate / setup are you using for your opensl_source? I've
set up a flowgraph that is just an opensl_source (sampling at 48kHz)
connected to a file sink, and when I play back the file through GRC on my
desktop my audio is coming out pretty garbled, as if samples are being
dropped. I've also tried a couple other sampling rates (44.1kHz, 32kHz,
16kHz to name a few.) I'm using a Nexus 4 running Android 5.0.1. Pasted
below is some of my code.

Vijay

Flowgraph code:
JNIEXPORT void JNICALL
Java_com_example_grrecordmic_GrRecordMic_InitFlowgraph(JNIEnv* env, jobject
thiz, jstring jsinkfilename)
{
    int rate = 48000;
    const char *sinkfilename = env->GetStringUTFChars(jsinkfilename, 0);

    global_tb = gr::make_top_block("Record_Mic");

    gr::grand::opensl_source::sptr micSource =
gr::grand::opensl_source::make(rate);
    gr::blocks::file_sink::sptr fileSink =
gr::blocks::file_sink::make(sizeof(float), sinkfilename, false);

    global_tb->connect(micSource, 0, fileSink, 0);

    env->ReleaseStringUTFChars(jsinkfilename, sinkfilename);
}

I believe that I used either 32k and/or 44.1k. I was using a Nexus 7,
though, and the codec might play a significant role with this between the
two devices.

Perhaps try setting the file sink to unbuffered mode?

    fileSink->set_unbuffered(true);

Frankly, I feel like this is unlikely to help, but it'll be interesting to
know what happens.

Tom


From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Tom
Rondeau
Sent: March-17-15 07:37
To: Vijay Galbaransingh
Cc: GNURadio Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio on Android

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 12:10 AM, Vijay Galbaransingh <address@hidden> wrote:
Thanks Tom, that sorted it out. My audio output is a bit choppy but no
matter – time to move on to some more complex flowgraphs in my Android app.

Thanks again,
Vijay

Yes, the skipping in the audio output is a known bug, and  apparently known
to be difficult in Android. It's going to take some kind of double buffering
to fix it at this level. I did not experience any problems with the audio
source, though; I just saved it to a file, brought it back to my computer,
and played it there and it sounded fine.

Tom



From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Tom
Rondeau
Sent: March-16-15 06:37
To: Vijay Galbaransingh
Cc: GNURadio Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio on Android

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 3:28 AM, Vijay Galbaransingh <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi Tom,

I have been following your notes on the wiki in an attempt to build a test
app (a dial tone flowgraph.) I'm hitting a snag on the ndk-build step
though -- when I use your example Android.mk listing, the linker isn't
finding any of the static libraries we built (gnuradio, grand, boost, fftw.)
Instead I'm getting a pile of undefined reference errors.

I tried editing the example Android.mk file by adding the following before
the shared library build:

include $(CLEAR_VARS)
LOCAL_MODULE := grand_static_lib #for example
LOCAL_SRC_FILES := /opt/grandroid/lib/libgnuradio-grand.a
include $(PREBUILT_STATIC_LIBRARY)

However I quickly realised that while there are only a few gnuradio
libraries to add this way, there are a ton of boost libraries... Is there a
smarter way to add all the prebuilt .a libraries at once? Or am I headed in
the wrong direction entirely?

Any tips appreciated,
Vijay


Yep, you have to add all of the libraries into the Android.mk file. I've
updated the wiki:

http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/GRAndApps

You can go there and simply download GrAndroid.mk that does all of this for
you and include it in your Android.mk file. Just follow the instructions.

Hope that helps,

Tom



From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Tom
Rondeau
Sent: March-13-15 14:41
To: Vijay Galbaransingh
Cc: GNURadio Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio on Android
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 5:04 PM, Vijay Galbaransingh <address@hidden> wrote:
Hi,

Has a patched version of GNU Radio which runs on Android been released?

I'm working on a project where I'm transmitting information over audio
from a desktop system to an Android device, and since setting up the
transmitter end with GNU Radio was such a snap I would love to leverage
the GNU Radio system to build the receiver as well.

Thanks,
Vijay

Just yesterday, in fact:

http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Android

I'll try to release some of my apps soon. One of them captures from the
audio device, even. It's not too hard since there's the gr-grand opensl
audio source block to talk to the audio system.

Tom