I thought I would throw my $0.02 into the bucket. I have two LimeSDR boards delivered as of 01/26. I’m running Ubuntu 16.10 with the latest LimeSuite and SoapySDR being built from github. I’m building gnuradio and gqrx via pybombs. None of the PPA packages other than the limesuite-udev package are installed. Both boards are enumerated by the system. Both LimeUtil and SoapySDRUtil see the boards, display --info, and respond to --make just fine.
Initially both boards were deaf on HF (below 30 Mhz) using GQRX. Marty, KN0CK, gave me some hints that got me to the point that I now see signals below 30 Mhz, only it’s the FM broadcast band being repeated over and over between 1.4 Mhz and 30 Mhz. I do not see any HF signals that are normally in band.
Initially when I ran any executable that accessed the boards I would get a version mismatch message for both the firmware and gateware. I tried running “LimeUtil --update” on both boards. It appeared to transfer both images to the boards, but on subsequent uses still showed the same version mismatch error message. I finally tried downloading both the LimeSDR-USB_HW_1.3_r3.0.img and LimeSDR-USB_HW_1.4_r2.2.rbf locally and loading them with the LimeUtil “–fw” and “–fpga” options. Oddly only the FPGA image appeared to take. I finally tried just the LimeUtil with --fw option and that took for the firmware. Now I don’t get the version mismatch messages for that one board.
Since the second board appeared to have a FPGA image (v2 r5) that is newer than available on the download link (http://downloads.myriadrf.org/project/limesuite/17.01) I left it in place and only updated the firmware to version 3.
Both cards still behave the same on HF. With all the sliders for gain set to max in GQRX, many signals I expect hear for FAA and local law-enforcement frequencies are not strong enough to be understood. FM broadcast and local UHF/VHF ham repeaters are coming in clearly, but the ones I’m line of sight to are easily in hearing distance.
Another problem I’ve seen is with USB3 enumeration on Ubuntu 16.10. USB2 works fine, and I can get a full 12 Mps out of the card for USB2. USB3 sees both cards, but I get an error on the console:
[ 139.367756] usb 6-2: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 139.385187] usb 6-2: LPM exit latency is zeroed, disabling LPM.
[ 139.386119] usb 6-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d50, idProduct=6108
[ 139.386123] usb 6-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 139.386125] usb 6-2: Product: LimeSDR-USB
[ 139.386128] usb 6-2: Manufacturer: Myriad-RF
[ 139.386130] usb 6-2: SerialNumber: 0009060B00462017
[ 140.472200] usb 5-2: new high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[ 140.673802] usb 5-2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d50, idProduct=6108
[ 140.673806] usb 5-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 140.673808] usb 5-2: Product: LimeSDR-USB
[ 140.673810] usb 5-2: Manufacturer: Myriad-RF
[ 140.673813] usb 5-2: SerialNumber: 0009060B00462017
[ 144.625384] usb 6-2: can’t set config #1, error -110
Neither board is responsive on USB3 after this, and unplugging and moving to another USB3 port causes no new enmeration or console message until reboot. It could be a local error with udev, but I haven’t looked closer at it yet.
The big challenge for me is the support for HF. If anyone knows that magic incantation for resolving this, I would be all ears to hear it.
I also want to say thank you to everyone who has gotten me this far. From the start of the Crowd-Supply campaign to bleeding edge code changes happening now - thank you.
-Freeman, N5FPP