Im researching the possibility of a LimeSDR working with OpenWRT. I know there is a rtl_sdr solution with a tuner chip but we would like to try the limesdr. Is it possible to have a setup like the rtl_sdr where you have external access to the limesdr which is connected to a device with OpenWRT running?
I found that linux based installation includes building from source which is not a problem just need some info on whether it is possible to integrate it with OpenWRT
What do you mean by “integrate [LimeSDR]”? Do you mean you want to run some SDR app in OpenWRT? If so, it’s pretty easy - OpenWRT will already have the kernel level support for USB, so you will just have to build the LimeSDR libraries for whatever CPU your OpenWRT platform uses. Be Advised: If you are trying to use the typical router hardware platform, you don’t have a lot of CPU power to play with, so you aren’t going to be doing big heavy waveforms - Things like APCO25 or FM yes, things like DTV no.
If you mean “Use the SDR to do WiFi” - see above. You don’t have a lot of CPU, probably not enough to demodulate modern WiFi with software.
Just to add that, if the idea would be to remotely access a LimeSDR connected to a system running OpenWRT, then this should be possible using SoapyRemote, where you would run SoapySDRServer on the OpenWRT system:
Then run the actual SDR application (with SoapySDR support of course) on a remote system. This would be far preferable to running the application on the OpenWRT host, assuming that it’s a typical resource constrained router or similar platform as noted by @N0YKG.
Having done this sort of thing professionally, even the idea of using a router as a remote radio head has issues. When you start trying to capture tens of megasamples per second over USB, and then send them over Ethernet, you quickly burn through all your CPU just schlepping data around. I was working with high-end FPGA based systems with fast ARM processors, and hardware designed to do DMA from the ADC to the system memory, and even then I topped out around 20MSample/sec.
So following the build instructions in the SoapyRemote project on my OpenWRT device should suffice on that side? And then set it up on a remote device as well to connect to it?
You would also need to have Soapy installed first, before building Lime Suite, and ensuring that the Soapy module component of Lime Suite was built. Then would you run up SoapySDRServer and make sure that it detects the SDR. It’s nearly 10 years since I did this and here’s a demo from back then:
Okay I will take a look at the video! And all this is available for OpenWRT? I guess it involves a lot of building from source?
I have no idea. It’s a long time since I did anything with OpenWRT.
Okay thank you for the quick responses. I will take a look if it is even possible on OpenWRT.
It will absolutely be possible and likely a question of whether there are packages available or you must build these yourself, or alternatively can just build and install from source.
Okay to conclude this and make it clear I need the following on my OpenWRT device:
Little update for the people interested. I successfully compiled a SoapySDR ipk using the openwrt SDK from the firmware selector which is the installed version I have. Onto LimeSuite next!