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gr-funcube

GNU Radio source blocks for the FUNcube Dongle Pro and Pro+

What it does

Provides GNU Radio source blocks for both generations of the FUNcube Dongle, the SDR receiver built for the AMSAT-UK FUNcube satellite programme: samples arrive through the dongle's USB audio interface and frequency, gain and mixer settings go through its HID control interface, with a block for each model.

Why you would want it

It is the maintained path from a FUNcube Dongle into GNU Radio. The dongle is a receive-only device that predates the RTL-SDR wave and remains a clean, low-noise receiver for satellite telemetry; owners of one need this rather than any of the Soapy or osmocom modules, which do not speak its HID control protocol.

Before it will work

A FUNcube Dongle on USB, and GNU Radio itself, which apt brings in as a dependency. The Debian package ships 60-gr-funcube.rules granting world access to both models, so no group membership is needed for the control interface; the audio side is a standard USB audio class device that any console session can already read.

How it installs

  • apt: gr-funcube

Known problems

The shipped udev rule's hidraw stanzas carry ATTRS{busnum}=="1", so the raw HID node is only opened up for a dongle that enumerates on USB bus 1 — the same rule's libusb stanzas carry no such restriction. A dongle on any other bus can fail permission checks in tools that open /dev/hidraw* directly while gr-funcube's own libusb path works. Read the rule itself on the installed system before chasing anything else. The two models are not interchangeable: the Pro is 04d8:fb56 and the Pro+ is 04d8:fb31, each with its own source block, and upstream's fcd_control_impl.cc and fcdpp_control_impl.cc are the authority on which is which.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Source: catalog/packages/gr-funcube.yaml