Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] "GNU Radio is crap" and GSoc

[Jens Elsner]

Andrew,

Am 15.02.2012 19:41, schrieb Andrew Davis:
> Well some major GNUradio program would drive up sales of USRP's :)
>
> Back on topic, IMHO Gnuradio's problem with large apps stems from it
> trying to be the source to sink and everything in between of a radio.

> Lets take DREAM for example, they do transfer functions and digital
> AGC and the likes that GNUradio by design should not do.

If you could elaborate on this point - why should GNU Radio not 
implement
channel equalization (I assume that's what you mean?) or digital AGC?

> If you want
> to re-write DREAM with GNUradio you will end up writing about +200
> blocks, not much fun.

Since I suggested this particular project, I obviously cannot agree. 
:-)

Pulling the code base into GNU Radio might be a nice addition to
the available receivers and it can be useful for all amateur radio
operators world wide.

Plus DRM is broadcasting so we don't need to worry about timing issues,
a real drawback of GNU Radio (and high level SDR in general).

How fine the signal processing chain needs to be chopped up is a
matter of taste and performance, I believe.

> What people want is simple input to there
> program and a simple output API, not there entire program. They don't
> what to figure out how to write a GNURadio block or know anything
> about the complexities of GNURadio. They want to say "get me a signal
> at 100MHz, filter and interpolate to 1ksp with these cutoff
> frequencies then send me the data and let me do the rest", no need to
> know anything about GNURadio, what other API makes you learn as much
> about it?

I am not sure I understand your point here. That is not GNU Radio, I
see GNU Radio as a scheduler with a big collection of signal processing
blocks attached.

[...]

> Back to DREAM,
> a lot of the filters, audio input/output, signal conditioning, etc
> could be in GNURadio, but a lot of the middle section cannot. 
> GNURadio

Then it would be nice to find out what exactly is lacking to add this
to GNU Radio.

> can not be the whole program, just helper functions in big programs
> like this. Only about %20 of DREAM could be replaced with GNURadio 
> API
> calls, but instead you will have to rewrite it %100 as GNURadio 
> blocks
> with the current block to block only mentality </rant>

I don't agree. We'll hopefully settle the matter some day. :-)

Jens