SO the Lime arrived today, I installed the USB Driver, and tried to run SDR-Console, which Simon said should work straight off, but I’m getting an error, are there any other files needed, simon said he has
I have these files installed:
limesdr-usb_1.2 fw0.img
LimeSDR-USB_lms7_trx_v15.rbf
But I don’t see these anywhere, I know they are not part of sdr-console… Any ideas…
Paul
What firmware version was shipped on the first batch?
Paul,
Those are part of the FPGA files for the LimeSDR and aren’t for the PC - so those files won’t help you because the latest RBF and IMG files (I’m assuming) were loaded at the factory so the LimeSDR has the means to operate with apps once the USB 3.0 drivers are installed. For the record, those USB 3.0 drivers are located here:
http://downloads.myriadrf.org/project/limesdr/limesdr_cyusb_driver_1.3.zip
Just follow the directions at this web location:
https://wiki.myriadrf.org/Lime_Suite#CyUSB_driver
And then once the USB 3.0 drivers are installed you should be home free unless there are such significant changes to the LimeSDR since the beta versions were let out there for the developers and bloggers (me) that they aren’t compatible to the LimeSDR apps that exist in their initial form (read here: the old version LimeSDR).
Also, at this moment in time, plugging my new LimeSDR into my main station PC it’s seen by the Device Manager, but it has a warning that the driver isn’t installed even though it knows it’s a LimeSDR:
…And when I plug in my old LimeSDR I get:
So what I think we have is that the new LimeSDR has new drivers and I’m not sure they’ve updated that on the MyriadRF website, but I saw a gripe on that this morning and Andrew Back mentioned that they would be updating that. Hope that happens soon or there’s going to be a lot of unhappy Backers in the short term…
I have the benefit of running this on a Cube PC so I may just see if I can load the new drivers onto my Cube PC running Win10 and see if I can make the existing drivers function…Stay tuned for that much later this evening…
73 de Marty, KN0CK
Note, the device manager will see the name of the device, and will most likely read the VID and PID. It will use these to go looking for an appropriate driver. As these are not associated with anything in the Windows system, it will not know where to go looking. I am very grateful to the Lime team for ensuring that they got a signed driver. An unsigned driver is a bit of a pain to get loaded on Win 10. Not impossible, but more steps than had to be done before.
As it stands, even assuming you’ve updated the firmware and gateware with the latest from the github repos at https://github.com/myriadrf and installed the signed drivers, you will still have issues using any other software other than Lime Suite GUI. The issue that you are probably having, if it’s the same as mine, is that SoapySDR is not capable of properly configuring the device.
(I’m assuming Windows here) To be certain, go and grab PothosSDR, to make sure you have Soapy. Then, in a command prompt, run SoapySDRUtil --probe="driver=lime". Chances are, this will error at the end.
Note: It looks like there is a new build as of a couple hours ago. I don’t know what has changed, but I’m going to find out right now.
yup, PothosSDR sees it, see below, so I guess Simon will need to update the sdr-console…it;s a bit bad that you would not give out the updates to programmers before releasing the update, quite a few ham/swl user bought this radio, to use with Simons great sdr-console as he was supporting it, and this is what they do, drop the doo doo on simon… Great launch by LimeSDR…
Probe device driver=lime
Win32; Microsoft Visual C++ version 14.0; Boost_106300; UHD_003.010.001.HEAD-0-gd9edfc57
[INFO] Make connection: ‘USB 3.0 (LimeSDR-USB)’
########################################################
########################################################
Estimated reference clock 30.7196 MHz
Selected reference clock 30.720 MHz
[INFO] Device name: LimeSDR-USB
[INFO] Reference: 30.72 MHz
[INFO] Init LMS7002M(0)
Edit: This was using the December build of PothosSDR. The new build does not have this issue.
Out of curiousy, can you post the entirety of SoapySDRUtil’s output for comparisons sake? Here’s mine:
######################################################
## Soapy SDR -- the SDR abstraction library
######################################################
Probe device driver=lime
Win32; Microsoft Visual C++ version 14.0; Boost_106200; UHD_003.010.001.HEAD-0-g929e3b32
[INFO] Make connection: 'USB 3.0 (LimeSDR-USB)'
########################################################
## !!! Warning: firmware version mismatch !!!
## Expected firmware version 0, but found version 3
## Follow the FW and FPGA upgrade instructions:
## http://wiki.myriadrf.org/Lime_Suite#Flashing_images
########################################################
########################################################
## !!! Warning: gateware version mismatch !!!
## Expected gateware version 2, revision 0
## But found version 2, revision 6
## Follow the FW and FPGA upgrade instructions:
## http://wiki.myriadrf.org/Lime_Suite#Flashing_images
########################################################
[INFO] Device name: LimeSDR USB
[INFO] Reference: 30.72 MHz
[INFO] Init LMS7002M(0)
HOME variable is not set
LMS7002M values cache at C:\Users\blakf\AppData\Local\Temp\/.limesuite/LMS7002M_cache_values.db
[INFO] Ver=7, Rev=1, Mask=1
[INFO] LMS7002M calibration values caching Enable
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setFrequency(Rx, 0, BB, 0 MHz)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setFrequency(Tx, 0, BB, 0 MHz)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setAntenna(Rx, 0, LNAL)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setAntenna(Tx, 0, BAND1)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setGain(Rx, 0, PGA, 0 dB)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setGain(Rx, 0, LNA, 0 dB)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setGain(Rx, 0, TIA, 0 dB)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setGain(Tx, 0, PAD, -50 dB)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setSampleRate(Rx, 0, 10 MHz), CGEN=80 MHz, ADC=20 MHz, decim=2
ConnectionSTREAM::ConfigureFPGA_PLL(tx=20MHz, rx=10MHz)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setSampleRate(Tx, 0, 10 MHz), CGEN=80 MHz, DAC=20 MHz, interp=2
ConnectionSTREAM::ConfigureFPGA_PLL(tx=10MHz, rx=10MHz)
[INFO] SoapyLMS7::setBandwidth(Rx, 0, 30 MHz)
SetFrequency using cache values vco:0, csw:117
SetFrequency using cache values vco:0, csw:140
SetFrequency using cache values vco:0, csw:87
SetFrequency using cache values vco:0, csw:94
e[1me[31m[ERROR] setBandwidth(Rx, 0, 30 MHz) Failed - CFB_TIA_RFE step size out of rangee[0m
Error probing device: CFB_TIA_RFE step size out of rangeyour limesdr sdr hardware version is 1.4
SDR-Console limesuite.dll version is too old ,only support hardware version 1.2 limesdr
please wait new SDR-Console release
and now we have digitally signed windows drivers
I had an e-mail this morning informing me that my early bird LimeSDR has shipped, once it arrives I’ll get support working.
The sources are all on GitHub and the best way for application developers to keep up-to-date is to follow the LimeSDR* and Lime Suite repositories. Everyone can have the latest updates whenever they like 
Thanks to @jocover we now have continuous integration via Travis and Appveyor for Lime Suite and one possibility would be for developers to set something similar up with Lime Suite as a dependency, to ensure that their applications still build following any updates.
Does anyone have the link to the new .IMG and .RBF files for the new LimeSDR firmware? I’d like to update the old LimeSDR I have to the new firmware so my platforms (Linux and Windows) match for both Limes. If you have that link, please post it and let me know if the software loading procedure changed on that at all.
Thanks -
Marty
@martywittrock please see the Lime Suite documentation for instructions and links to the latest image downloads:
Marty,
Thanks for asking that - I’ll try to compile the current code - let me know if/when you get the latest firmware installed.
so i followed the guide and the example ini file, and the board seems to be working here, so I guess like you said its a firmware issue in the older boards, once you upgrade it… But this is a good guide for testing it works… Now does lime suite pass audio?? Oh and under pothos, the gqrx, can’t seem to get that to work yet, so it’ll go back in its pretty green and black box until SDR-Console works 
Glad to hear the tests passed OK! Lime Suite GUI is really just for development and testing.
Simon,
I was one of the Backers so you can let me know when you have a new V3.0 ready and I’ll play with it since I have a new LimeSDR…I’ll also convert the old one I have to the new firmware to see if it’s compatible, too.
Thanks for checking back, Simon - 73 de Marty, KN0CK
I had some issues with gqrx as well. Make sure you have the new Pothos build from yesterday, and you will have to fiddle with the device parameters. I used the values from this post as reference:
I believe I used the 10 Msps sample rate and the 4 MHz bandwidth, I had issues with other combinations crashing gqrx.
So i found the link, but strange thing, the auto program was trying to download a different one to the latest it was trying to get the 1.3r2.0 rather than 1.3r3.0 ?
Thanks TKtech, I’ll give that a try tonight…