On 2022-03-18 14:48, david vanhorn wrote:
Noise is always an issue.  I could do a serial port over USB, or TTL USART, but I thought that the SD card would be the most quiet, not requiring any electrical connection to the PC. It also means that I automatically have my recordings available for regression testing.

Yeah, I thought that your architecture was probably driven by noise concerns--630M would not be a "forgiving" band in this regard.  I will point out, just as an FYI,   that USB-over-fiber extenders do exist, but because they're rather "niche", they're not cheap at all....



On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 12:32 PM Marcus Müller <mmuel...@gnuradio.org> wrote:

    Ah cool! Thanks for clarifying :) This sounds to be a rather nice
    setup, analog-wise!

    Yeah, then just dumping the raw 32bit unsigned to SD Card is
    probably easiest.

    (by the way, this is << 1Mb/s, so just dumping the raw data over a
    UART or SPI interface
    to some serial-to-USB converter might work as well to get the data
    into your PC. If your
    ARM does have USB2 built-in, then that would also be a rather cool
    thing, but knowing the
    varying quality of chip vendor USB hardware abstractions, that
    might or might not be easy
    to implement :) In both cases, UART/SPI serial output converted to
    USB, or native USB,
    you'd probably have to afterwards write a schmall C/C++ driver, so
    that SoapySDR or GNU
    Radio directly can talk to it.)

    Cheers,
    Marcus

    On 18.03.22 19:26, david vanhorn wrote:
    > I'm using a PCB that I designed with an ARM chip, codec, and SD
    card for logging, as my
    > data capture platform.
    > Feeding that is a QSD (Tayloe) front end that I designed,
    specifically for the 630m ham
    > band, converting down to 1kHz differential I and Q signals to
    the codec, which has a 105dB
    > SNR.
    > The front end appears to have a 90dB linear dynamic range so far
    as I can measure with my
    > equipment. I'll improve that if I can.
    > Once I capture to SD, then I can pull the SD and process on the
    PC to develop weak signal
    > detection.
    >
    >
    >
    > On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 12:12 PM Marcus Müller
    <mmuel...@gnuradio.org
    > <mailto:mmuel...@gnuradio.org>> wrote:
    >
    >     Hey :)
    >
    >     CSV might or might not be convenient, but if C or assembler
    is your tool: The things that
    >     the GNU Radio file source reads or the file sink writes is
    exactly what you get when you
    >     take a buffer of samples and do an `fwrite` on that :) Just
    a dump of the raw memory to a
    >     file. 32 bit unsigned should be directly digestible by GNU
    Radio (even if there were
    >     endianness issues – you can just read as bytes and reshuffle
    as needed :)).
    >
    >     I didn't fully get how you're currently interfacing your
    hardware. Care to explain in a
    >     bit more breadth? What are the components of your system,
    and how does the computer
    >     running GNU Radio relate?
    >
    >     Best and slightly excited regards,
    >     Marcus
    >
    >     On 18.03.22 18:37, david vanhorn wrote:
    >      > Hi!
    >      >
    >      > I'm trying to interface some radio hardware I built to
    GnuRadio by way of data
    >     captured to
    >      > SD cards.
    >      > I have two channels (I and Q) of 32 bit unsigned data
    internally, and I originally
    >     assumed
    >      > CSV would be the easy path, but now I see it's not.
    >      > Coming in through the PC sound card is not an option for
    me, I'm using a particular
    >     codec
    >      > selected for the application, and my goal is to develop
    signal processing
    >     algorithms to
    >      > then be implemented back on my processor in C or ASM.
    >      >
    >      > I suppose it would be easiest if I rework my hardware to
    log data as if it were the
    >      > "Signal Source" block with complex output.
    >      > Where can I see what that looks like at the level of raw
    data?
    >      >
    >      >
    >      >
    >      >
    >      > On Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 4:59 AM Marcus Müller
    <mmuel...@gnuradio.org
    >     <mailto:mmuel...@gnuradio.org>
    >      > <mailto:mmuel...@gnuradio.org
    <mailto:mmuel...@gnuradio.org>>> wrote:
    >      >
    >      >     Hi David,
    >      >
    >      >     you could write a quick python block that just reads
    values from the CSV file
    >     and outputs
    >      >     them. That'd be a very nice, basic exercise, and I
    think our freshly overhauled
    >      >     tutorials[1] should bring you there very quickly!
    >      >     If you want help with that, hit us up in this mailing
    list (ideally after
    >     reading the
    >      >     tutorials up to the point of roughly understanding
    how to write (embedded) Python
    >      >     blocks),
    >      >     and tell us more about the data in your CSV files.
    >      >
    >      >     Alternatively, you could also write a converter of
    CSV to a format that GNU
    >     Radio by
    >      >     itself already has a reader for – and the main
    candidate here would probably
    >     just be
    >      >     plain
    >      >     raw data files (as e.g. numpy's
    `ndarray.tofile("filename")` does) – the File
    >     Source
    >      >     could
    >      >     directly read that. But with our freshly rewrite
    Wavfile sink and source
    >     blocks, we can
    >      >     write and read most audio files, just as well.
    >      >
    >      >     Then your flow graph could do the signal processing
    you want – e.g frequency
    >     translation,
    >      >     low-pass filtering… and finally output it to any
    device that you have a GNU Radio
    >      >     interface to (e.g., your sound card). The hardware
    runs at a sample rate – GNU
    >     Radio
    >      >     itself just tries to feed it as fast as possible. So,
    the signal processing in
    >     GNU Radio
    >      >     itself isn't concerned with rate at all!
    >      >
    >      >     Hope this helps,
    >      >     Marcus
    >      >
    >      >     [1] https://tutorials.gnuradio.org
    <https://tutorials.gnuradio.org>
    >     <https://tutorials.gnuradio.org
    <https://tutorials.gnuradio.org>>
    >      >
    >      >     PS: you'll often find me online, recommending not to
    use CSV as a sample
    >     storage format.
    >      >     I'll do the same to you here, but not because I think
    it's in any way invalid
    >     to have
    >      >     data
    >      >     in CSV files; I just want to point out it might be
    worth thinking about using
    >     something
    >      >     else. So take this with a "I think it's pretty cool
    you're doing this!".
    >      >
    >      >     That has the reasons that
    >      >     a) unless you're more restricted than "CSV" says, you
    don't know how many bits
    >     are there
    >      >     per sample, as numbers might be represented in
    different lengths, so seeking
    >     exactly only
    >      >     works by reading and understanding the whole file up
    to the point you seek to,
    >      >     b) conversion of floating point numbers to
    human-readable form incurs rounding
    >     errors,
    >      >     and
    >      >     that can really wreck your day if you need to rerun
    *exactly* the same
    >     experiment twice,
    >      >     c) printing numbers as text is really inefficient,
    both storage-wise as well as
    >     compute
    >      >     wise (which will only matter at higher sampling
    rates) and sometimes, but only
    >     sometimes,
    >      >     ( d) people say that CSV is good because it's
    human-readable, but I challenge
    >     anyone to
    >      >     read a text file with only 10000 values and be
    happier about that than if he
    >     used a tool
    >      >     that displayed the values graphically, zoomably, and
    then allows for inspection
    >     of single
    >      >     values once zoomed sufficiently in.)
    >      >
    >      >
    >      >     On 18.03.22 04:55, david vanhorn wrote:
    >      >      > I've done a little with Gnuradio a couple years
    ago, but I'd now like to
    >     apply it to a
    >      >      > serious problem.
    >      >      >
    >      >      > I have a design I'm working on that will output
    raw data that could be
    >     interpreted
    >      >     as an
    >      >      > audio stream centered on 1kHz.  I'd like to work
    on extracting CW signals
    >     that are
    >      >     rather
    >      >      > slow, from a rather narrow bandwidth, and see how
    far down into the noise I can
    >      >     actually
    >      >      > extract the signals.
    >      >      >
    >      >      > Is there a block that can bring in CSV data from a
    file at a specific rate, and
    >      >     serve as
    >      >      > the input to my CW detection system?
    >      >      >
    >      >      >
    >      >      > --
    >      >      > K1FZY (WA4TPW) SK  9/29/37-4/13/15
    >      >
    >      >
    >      >
    >      > --
    >      > K1FZY (WA4TPW) SK  9/29/37-4/13/15
    >
    >
    >
    > --
    > K1FZY (WA4TPW) SK  9/29/37-4/13/15



--
K1FZY (WA4TPW) SK  9/29/37-4/13/15

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