LimeSDR Mini: [Error] "MCU working too long"

Projects LimeSDR
1

Hi there,

I just received my LimeSDR Mini and after trying to use it in both gqrx and gnuradio-companion, I keep running into this error:

[ERROR] MCU working too long 33
[ERROR] setBandwidth(Rx, 0, 30 MHz) Failed - 
Error probing device:

I’m using the latest versions of pretty much everything from the Myriad RF, gnuradio, and gqrx PPA’s under Ubuntu 16.04. I’ve installed the udev rules and have ensured they were loaded correctly as well. The commands I’m trying work just fine with my LimeSDR USB on the exact same USB port.

In an effort to dig a little deeper, I installed SoapySDRUtil. the --find command finds the LimeSDR Mini without issue.

However, SoapySDRUtil --probe="driver=lime" still gives the same error as both gqrx and gnuradio-companion. Here is the full output:

######################################################
## Soapy SDR -- the SDR abstraction library
######################################################

Probe device driver=lime
[INFO] Make connection: 'LimeSDR Mini [USB 3.0] <redacted>'
[INFO] Device name: LimeSDR-mini
[INFO] Reference: 40 MHz
[INFO] Init LMS7002M(0)
[INFO] Ver=7, Rev=1, Mask=1
[INFO] LMS7002M calibration values caching Disable
CGEN: Freq=80 MHz, VCO=2.56 GHz, INT=63, FRAC=0, DIV_OUTCH_CGEN=15
CGEN: Freq=61.44 MHz, VCO=2.4576 GHz, INT=60, FRAC=461373, DIV_OUTCH_CGEN=19
CGEN: Freq=61.44 MHz, VCO=2.4576 GHz, INT=60, FRAC=461373, DIV_OUTCH_CGEN=19
M=156, N=3, Fvco=1040.000 MHz
M=156, N=3, Fvco=1040.000 MHz
MCU programming : 16384/16384
MCU Programming finished, 2826 ms
[ERROR] MCU working too long 33
[ERROR] setBandwidth(Rx, 0, 30 MHz) Failed - 
Error probing device: 
libusb: warning [libusb_exit] application left some devices open

I haven’t tested RX/TX with with LimeSuiteGUI yet, because it’s honestly tedious. I’ll try to figure out how to do that now, but without these other tools working, the LimeSDR Mini is going on the shelf.

EDIT: Okay, I tested RX/TX using LimeSuiteGUI as well as the LimeSDR-Mini_QuickTest_1v1 under Windows 10 and it is working okay. I also tested RX/TX under using LimeSuiteGUI under my Linux install and that also works okay. Now it’s just about getting the gnuradio portions of all this working!

Any hints on what might be going on here?

Thanks!
Jamis

P.S. There’s no category for LimeSDR Mini…

2

@jamisnemo I was also consistently running into the same type of issues. There is definitely something wrong with the LimeSuite API or the Soapy libraries interaction with it that is causing some major issues. Today I cloned the LimeSuite repository and compiled from source code. After getting the latest code base i am now able to run GQRX fairly consistently using settings 2.5msps, 20mhz bandwidth, and connection string: driver=lime,soapy=0. Regarding the UDEV rules…I re-installed the rules, however there still seems to be something weird with the gain settings so I’m currently running GQRX as root and it seems to be working okay so far. Receive sensitivity seems to not be as good as the bigger LimeSDR, but at least it’s working now compared to this past week of testing. You may want to give it a shot, get the source code, and compile from source.