Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Why Isn't GNU Radio Used More?

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 09/05/2011 8:53 AM, Michael Dickens wrote:
> Can we bring Tom's post to this list?
>
> <  
> http://gnuradio.squarespace.com/home/2011/5/8/why-isnt-gnu-radio-used-more.html>
>
> Yes, I do actually read his posts ;)  I hope others do too; he writes with 
> clarity and has things to say if you're into SDR and GNU Radio.
>
> I hope Tom's post sparks some good discussion -- not just with me or Tom (or 
> the usual GNU Radio cohorts), but with more casual users as well since (I 
> believe) they make up the majority of the folks trying to use GNU Radio.  I 
> will post my initial comments shortly, but I wanted to get this discussion 
> going. - MLD
I think there's a significant community out there that learned DSP 
techniques inside the envelope of Matlab/Simulink, and that's what 
they're comfortable with.    To change this, Gnu Radio has to appear in 
more places in academia, so that graduating engineers have already been 
exposed to it, and find it "natural".

The documentation, as Tom observed, is disorganized and incomplete.  
This is rather an inevitable result of a system that grows organically 
as it has--99% of the contributing participants are largely coders, and 
not so much document writers.

There's a fear of Python, both because a surprising number of folks 
don't know Python, and also because there's some (largely-misplaced) 
fear that a Python-based application will be far too slow for their 
application.  There's still ignorance about GnuRadio Companion--I think 
a lot of folks think that
it's only useful for "initial tinkering and playing around".  But I've 
constructed entire applications with it, and if it were better 
documented, more
people would likely use it for production work.  The XMLRPC server 
feature, for example, isn't well understood by most follks, but I use it 
in two of
my applications to great advantage.