Gqrx

Gqrx is an open source software defined radio (SDR) receiver implemented using GNU Radio and the Qt GUI toolkit. Currently it works on Linux and Mac with hardware supported by gr-osmosdr, including Funcube Dongle, RTL-SDR, Airspy, HackRF, BladeRF, RFSpace, USRP and SoapySDR.

Gqrx can operate as an AM/FM/SSB receiver with audio output or as an FFT-only instrument. There are also various hooks for interacting with external applications using network sockets.

Download

Gqrx is distributed as a source code package and binaries for Linux and Mac. Many Linux distributions provide gqrx in their package repositories. Alternate Mac support is available through MacPorts and Homebrew.

• Official releases
• Pre-release builds

Usage

It is strongly recommended to run the volk_profile utility before running gqrx. This will detect and enable processor-specific optimisations and will in many cases give a significant performance boost.

The first time you start gqrx it will open a device configuration dialog. Supported devices that are connected to the computer are discovered automatically and you can select any of them in the drop-down list.

If you don't see your device listed in the drop-down list it could be because:

• The driver has not been included in a binary distribution
• The udev rule has not been properly configured
• Linux kernel driver is blocking access to the device

You can test your device using device specific tools, such as rtl_test, airspy_rx, hackrf_transfer, qthid, etc.

Gqrx supports multiple configurations and sessions if you have several devices or if you want to use the same device under different configurations. You can load a configuration from the GUI or using the -c command line argument. See gqrx --help for a complete list of command line arguments.

Tutorials and howtos are being written and published on the website https://gqrx.dk/

Known problems

See the bug tracker on Github: https://github.com/csete/gqrx/issues

Getting help and reporting bugs

There is a Google group for discussing anything related to Gqrx: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gqrx This includes getting help with installation and troubleshooting. Please remember to provide detailed description of your problem, your setup, what steps you followed, etc.

Please stick around and help others with their problems. Otherwise, if only developers provide user support there will be no more time for further development.

Installation from source

The source code is hosted on Github: https://github.com/csete/gqrx

To compile gqrx from source you need the following dependencies:

• GNU Radio 3.8 with the following components:
  • gnuradio-runtime
  • gnuradio-analog
  • gnuradio-audio
  • gnuradio-blocks
  • gnuradio-digital
  • gnuradio-fft
  • gnuradio-filter
  • gnuradio-pmt
• The gr-iqbalance library (optional)
• Drivers for the hardware you want to have support for:
  • Funcube Dongle Pro driver via gr-fcd
  • UHD driver via gr-uhd
  • Funcube Dongle Pro+ driver from https://github.com/dl1ksv/gr-fcdproplus
  • RTL-SDR driver from https://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr
  • OsmoSDR driver from https://git.osmocom.org/osmo-sdr
  • HackRF driver from https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf
  • Airspy driver from https://github.com/airspy/airspyone_host
  • SoapySDR from https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDR
  • RFSpace driver is built in
• gnuradio-osmosdr from https://git.osmocom.org/gr-osmosdr
• pulseaudio or portaudio (Linux-only and optional)
• Qt 5 with the following components:
  • Core
  • GUI
  • Network
  • Widgets
  • Svg (runtime-only)
• pkg-config
• cmake version >= 3.2.0 if you wish to build using cmake.

Gqrx can be compiled from within Qt Creator or in a terminal:

For command line builds:

$ git clone https://github.com/csete/gqrx.git gqrx.git
$ cd gqrx.git
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make

On some systems, the default cmake release builds are "over-optimized" and perform poorly. In that case try forcing -O2 using

export CXXFLAGS=-O2

before the cmake step.

For Qt Creator builds:

$ git clone https://github.com/csete/gqrx.git gqrx.git
$ cd gqrx.git
$ mkdir build
Start Qt Creator
Open gqrx.git/CMakeLists.txt file
At the dialog asking for build location, select gqrx.git/build
click continue
If asked to choose cmake executable, do so
click continue
click the run cmake button
click done
optionally, on the Projects page, under Build Steps/Make/Additional arguments,
	enter -j4 (replacing 4 with the number of cores in your CPU).
Use Qt Creator as before

Debugging

Debug logging can be enabled by setting the QT_LOGGING_RULES environment variable:

QT_LOGGING_RULES="*.debug=true;plotter.debug=false;qt.*.debug=false" gqrx

To turn on plotter debugging as well, use the following command:

QT_LOGGING_RULES="*.debug=true;qt.*.debug=false" gqrx

Credits and License

Gqrx is designed and written by Alexandru Csete OZ9AEC, and it is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Some of the source files were adapted from Cutesdr by Moe Weatley and these come with a Simplified BSD license.

The following people and organisations have contributed to gqrx:

• Alex Grinkov
• Alexander Fasching
• Andrea Merello
• Andrea Montefusco, IW0HDV
• Andy Sloane
• Anthony Willard
• Anton Blanchard
• Bastian Bloessl
• Ben Reese
• Bob McGwier, N4HY
• Brandonn Etheve
• charlylima
• Chris Kuethe
• Christian Lindner, DL2VCL
• Clayton Smith, VE3IRR
• Dallas Epperson
• Daniil Cherednik
• Darin Franklin
• Davide Gerhard
• Dominic Chen
• Elias Önal
• Federico Fuga
• Frank Brickle, AB2KT
• Frank Werner-Krippendorf, HB9FXQ
• Ganael Laplanche
• Gisle Vanem
• Göran Weinholt, SA6CJK
• Grigory Shipunov
• Gwenhael Goavec-Merou
• Jeff Long
• Jiawei Chen
• Jiří Pinkava
• Josh Blum
• Kate Adams
• Kenji Rikitake, JJ1BDX
• Kitware Inc.
• Konrad Beckmann
• luzpaz
• Marco Savelli
• Markus Kolb
• Michael Dickens
• Michael Lass
• Michael Tatarinov
• Moe Weatley
• Nadeem Hasan
• Nate Temple
• Nick Robinson, KE5YWP
• Nokia
• Oliver Grossmann, DH2WQ
• Pavel Milanes, CO7WT
• Pavel Stano
• Phil Vachon
• Rob Frohne
• Ron Economos, W6RZ
• Shuyuan Liu
• Stefano Leucci
• Sylvain Munaut
• Tarmo Tanilsoo
• Tomasz Lemiech
• Timothy Reaves
• Valentin Ochs
• Vesa Solonen
• Vincent Pelletier
• Will Scales
• Wolfgang Fritz, DK7OB
• Youssef Touil
• Zero_Chaos

Some of the icons are from:

• The GNOME icon theme CC-SA 3.0 by GNOME icon artists
• Tango icon theme, Public Domain by The people from the Tango! project
• Mint-X icon theme, GPL by Clement Lefebvre

Also thanks to Volker Schroer and Alexey Bazhin for bringing Funcube Dongle Pro+ support to GNU Radio and Gqrx.

Let me know if somebody is missing from the list.

Alex OZ9AEC