usrp¶
Ettus USRP — the research-grade SDR family, B200/B210 and older USB models
Vendor: Ettus Research / National Instruments
Status: supported — the identifiers and setup recipe are believed correct.
Not maintainer-verified: nobody on this project has run this hardware yet. The two facts are recorded separately on purpose (D-027) — a correct recipe and a tested device are different claims.
What it is¶
Ettus Research's Universal Software Radio Peripheral family. The B200 and B210 are the USB members and the ones most people meet; the entries here also cover the older USRP1 and B100, and the National-Instruments-branded B2xx boards, which enumerate under a different vendor id.
What you can do with it¶
Full-duplex transmit and receive with calibration and clock discipline good enough for research work, driven through UHD directly or through GNU Radio and SoapySDR.
Setup¶
Install uhd-host and join plugdev, then log out and back in. The FPGA images are large and Debian's package does not ship them all — uhd_images_downloader fetches what your board needs, over the network, on first use. uhd_find_devices should then list the board.
Known problems¶
The firmware download on first use surprises people, especially on a field machine with no connectivity — fetch the images before you leave. USB 3.0 is effectively required for the B210's full sample rate, and a marginal cable or hub shows up as dropped samples rather than as an error. The NI-branded boards are the same hardware under a different vendor id, which is why both appear above.
How it identifies itself¶
| USB id | What | Confirmed | Node |
|---|---|---|---|
fffe:0002 |
USRP1 device — unknown vendor | yes | libusb |
2500:0002 |
B100 device — Ettus Research LLC | yes | libusb |
2500:0020 |
B200 — USRP B210, Ettus Research LLC | yes | libusb |
2500:0021 |
USRP B200-mini — Ettus Research LLC | yes | libusb |
2500:0022 |
B200 — USRP B205-mini, Ettus Research LLC | yes | libusb |
3923:7813 |
B200 device — National Instruments Corp. | yes | libusb |
3923:7814 |
B200 device — National Instruments Corp. | yes | libusb |
Access and permissions¶
Group membership required: plugdev — added at install, applies at next login.
Software that makes it useful¶
Upstream: https://kb.ettus.com/