New Quick Test guide

New guide added to the wiki that shows how to perform a quick test to confirm operation of the LimeSDR-USB board, O/S drivers and Lime Suite:

https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR-USB_Quick_Test

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Thanks for a step-by-step, I went round and round in circles on the website for hours last night trying to find something that didnā€™t link back to the page I started onā€¦ I think someone else mentioned the same, much better now that the front page has been re-organizedā€¦

Yep, weā€™re rationalising the online documentation, which has come from various documents and sources. More improvements in the works and will be live over the coming days :slight_smile:

I just think its confusing when you see ā€œPlug and Playā€ you expect a complete package ready to go to be able to listen, especially from the ā€œham/swlā€ community, perhaps once Simonā€™s Console is ready, you should have a link to that also, would make a bunch of people happyā€¦

LimeSDR is plug and play in that it will work with a lot of existing SDR ecosystem software without modification, thanks to the investment that has been made in the SDR driver infrastructure. The user experience will continually improve as more people get boards, put them through their paces, any wrinkles are ironed out and the documentation is continually updated.

Sure, we definitely want to promote use of his software.

HI, all

I think Iā€™m being a bit thick, here (mitigation: Iā€™m new to SDR and code development is something I last did in the early '80sā€¦), but Iā€™m trying to follow the instructions at https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR-USB_Quick_Test to see if I can get my board working.

Iā€™m working under Windows and managed to get all the assorted software installed, and everything is going well until the bit where you download the 3 files. The two ini files are not really a problem, as when l come to loading them up, you can browse to the ā€˜Downloadsā€™ folder and select them from thereā€¦ The problem I have is with the ā€˜lms7suite_wfm.tgzā€™ file. I can download it, and unzip/untar it, but itā€™s unclear where to put the resulting folder with the 3 files.

When I click the ā€˜Modules->FPGA controlsā€™, I am greeted with an assortment of error messages which amount to the LimeSuite software not being able to find the folder/files.

Any pointers would be gratefully received

Regards
John

Hi John,

They need to go in a sub-directory called lms7suite_wfm. Iā€™ll get the page updated.

Hi, Andrew

Thanks for your reply.
They do indeed extract to a folder with that name - whatā€™s not clear is where exactly the folder has to be placedā€¦ its currently sat alongside the tgz and tar files in my ā€˜Downloadsā€™ folder.

Sorry if Iā€™m being a bit dim, here :frowning:

John

Ah, Iā€™m not a Windows user Iā€™m afraid. @zack, where would the folder with the WFM files need to be located on a Windows machine?

Location should be the same as for Linux - at the same level as executable there must be folder lms7suite_wfm. You put wfm files to lms7suite_wfm.

@joshblum would it be possible to add the folder with the WFM files to the Windows Pothos SDR installer? I guess the ini files also might be goodā€¦

Hi, Zack

Many thanks. Just to confirm I have this right, LimeUtil.exe, LimeSuiteGUI.exe, LimeSuiteCalibrate.py and LimeSuite.dll all reside in ā€œC:\Program Files\PothosSDR\binā€, along with all the other stuff Pothos installsā€¦ This (C:\Program Files\PothosSDR\bin) is where i should place the folder ā€œlms7suite_wfmā€ containing the 3 wfm files, yes?

Also, when I come to install everything on the Mac, the thing same applies?

Regards
John

Correct.
Just as a side note - software looks for ā€œonetone.wfmā€ and ā€œwcdma.wfmā€ in ā€œlms7suite_wfmā€ when you push ā€œOnetoneā€ and ā€œW-CDMAā€ buttons respectively.
You may choose a custom file location using an open button next to the ā€œCustomā€ button. Then you may switch between 3 wfm files easily using the ā€œOnetoneā€, ā€œW-CDMAā€ or ā€œCustomā€ buttons.

Should be the same (as I said before, software looks for files in lms7suite_wfm folder which is located in the same level as executable), although I have no chance to test it on OSX.

Thanks, Zack - Iā€™ll post back here (once Iā€™ve tried it) to let you know if itā€™s the same deal on the Mac.

Regards
John

Thanks @JohnM_G8PEF, much appreciated.

For Linux the directory ā€œlms7suite_wfmā€ should be in the home directory ā€œ~/ā€ (if the dir doesnā€™t exist it is created there!).

Regards,
Sabine, OE1YVW

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Sure, just want to discuss a few options because there is this whole trade off for what we check into the repo vs what we package along with the library. The reason I bring it up is that I added an option to the LimeSuite build itself to optionally download and install firmware images, because its useful to teach the build how do to this in one place and then enable it sparingly in various packaging options like snaps or homebrew.

So we can do the same with waveform files and ini files. Add an option to download and install them with the build, and use this in the windows installer, homebrew, snaps, or whatever.

Then I suppose these data files would end up in a location like $install/share/lime/examples/ something like that. How does that sound?

When I try to run the Quick Test on macOS I get the following error when pressing the ā€˜Calculateā€™ button on the ā€œSXTā€ tab:

After pressing ā€œOKā€ I get:

I tried it with the Homebrew version as well as with a build from the source!

Under Linux und Windows10 the Quick Test runā€™s ok, so the board itself could not be the reason.

Sounds good to me.

I had similar problems also with OSX. I found that if I reloaded the file while inside the SXT tab the ā€˜calculateā€™ and ā€˜tuneā€™ steps would pass. It appears there is some problem with the brew build but this should get you over the hurtle.