I'm just quoting an (anonymized) excrept from an IRC conversation I had:
====
19:42 < fooo> Does anyone know Max who is the main contributor to OP25 project? We're trying to run OP25
on XTRX and with many forks it's a bit difficult to understand what works and what doesn't
(not to mention the setup is completely non-trivial by itself)
19:45 < Baaaaaaar> i guess.. no one? wasn't that abandoned years ago?
19:46 < baaaaaz> just receiving? maybe it's easier to get it working with rtl-sdr first and then work
from there
19:50 < fooo> Not really abandoned - last commit Apr 27, 2018
19:50 < fooo> "max" branch
19:50 < fooo> There are also several forks which were never merged...
19:51 < fooo> baaaaaz, It doesn't really matter rtl-sdr vs XTRX since it's GnuRadio. It's that most
how-tos are completely outdated and are not compatible with the modern GNURadio...
19:52 < fooo> Ideally we'd like Tx too - I saw someone on YouTube showing Tx and OP25 has a repeater
mode. But yes. at least Rx would be nice
19:53 < baaaaaz> I see
19:54 <@LaF0rge> fooo: just contact their mailing list?
19:54 <@LaF0rge> Baaaaaaar: it's less abandoned than DECT or TETRA
19:55 <@LaF0rge> fooo: op25-dev(a)yahoogroups.com
19:55 < fooo> LaF0rge, Ok, thanks.
19:56 < fooo> Just curios - does he has any page/blog/LinkedIn? I don't think I've ever seen him at
OsmoDevCons?
19:57 <@LaF0rge> fooo: none of the OP25 guys has ever showed up in person at any event. I guess they were
originally from AU, so quite a bit far?
19:57 < fooo> AU = Australia?
19:57 <@LaF0rge> fooo: yes
19:58 < fooo> I see
19:58 < fooo> Looking at the commit history it's pretty much only Max who is contributing
19:59 <@LaF0rge> but maybe I remember wrongly. In any case, you won't find any APCO25 in Europe [not
that I know of] so the "classic Osmocom people" have limited use for playing with it
20:17 < fooo> Btw, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/search?query=op25 returns empty result
20:25 < Baaaaaaar> like i said... dead
20:29 < fooo> I don't think the project is dead, they just don't know/want to run it as a real community
project...
20:29 < fooo> I mean they probably just care about scratching their own itch. Which is not bad, it's just
not community
20:30 <@LaF0rge> the op25-dev mailing list is active. I'm following it. Many posts in april, few in may
20:31 <@LaF0rge> op25-dev-subscribe(a)yahoogroups.com should work
20:33 <@LaF0rge> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/op25-dev
====
All the above are long-term Osmocom developers. So as you can see, it's
easy to jump to wrong conclusions, if most development happens out of
master, and if the yahoo group is restricted/hidden and not publicly
archived :)
I'm not saying the fault is with OP25. If people want to jump to quick
conclusions without informing themselves properly, they have no right
to complain.
And of course it's the OP25 developers decision how to run their project
and their communications mechanisms, but I couldn't help but wonder and
raise the questions below:
Is there any specific reason that the op25-dev yahoo group is
* restricted (i.e. no public archive)
* not listed in the yahoo group index (makes it hard to find)
I would argue that it's a FOSS project, and information related to it
should be public rather than hidden.
I also have an archive of op25-dev at least from March 2012 onwards that
I'd be willing to share. We could import it into the lists.osmocom.org
mailman so would have a web-accessible archive that can be indexed by
search machines, etc.
You could of course also migrate to a list on lists.osmocom.org, but
that is of course a separate question, and always causing lots of
fall-out, with everyone having to update their filter rules, aliases,
etc. - so maybe not such a good idea.
Let me know what you think about any of the suggestions above. Do
with them what you like, it's just a friendly comment from your friends
involved in other Osmocom projects...
And btw: If anyone ever wants to show up for OsmoDevCon, please do reach out,
we'd be more than happy to learn about OP25 and the people behind it!
Regards,
Harald
--
- Harald Welte <laforge(a)gnumonks.org> http://laforge.gnumonks.org/
============================================================================
"Privacy in residential applications is a desirable marketing option."
(ETSI EN 300 175-7 Ch. A6)
ANNOUNCEMENTS
===============
1) New Web site
Our new web site is now on the air! I'd like to thank Matt Ames for
his efforts and hard work in reworking content to fit the new format.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank our hosts at Osmocom,
Harald and Holger, for kindly offering this free resource and home for
the project.
web site: http://op25.osmocom.org/
git repo: https://git.osmocom.org/op25
2) Recent additions and updates
Several updates have recently been pushed and are in the 'max' branch
of the repo. In addition to bug fixes in both transmitter and receiver
applications and libraries, there are a couple of new features:
* remote terminal: the curses terminal may now run in a separate process
or on a separate machine from rx.py, with connectivity via UDP.
* dstar transmitter configuration: the dstar specific config options for
repeater 1/2, mycall, and urcall are now supported.
3) CPU usage reduction effort
Except for the actual speech decoding process which remains unchanged,
the channel tuning and demodulation logic has undergone some streamlining.
The result should be a significant reduction in CPU usage in rx.py,
especially during idle periods. It's possible some of these optimizations
may be slightly too radical; it would be good to receive feedback from all
users, but especially from those with-
* crowded bands with close channel spacing
* p25 phase 2/tdma talkgroups
* "center frequency" set to zero in the trunking tsv file
4) New multiple rx app
Released today (Dec. 25, 2017) is a sneak preview of a new receiver app,
multi_rx.py. It should be considered alpha test grade. The highlights:
* receives DMR/YSF/P25(P1) (DSTAR almost finished)
* an arbitrary number of concurrently active SDR devices
* arbitrary numbers of channels/frequencies
For more information see the README file in the apps/ directory of the repo.
All of these additions have been pushed to the 'max' branch of the repo.
If you have a previous installation of OP25 you should change to the 'build'
directory of that installation and do
sudo make uninstall
prior to pulling and building the new version.
I just got my RPi scanner set up to stream audio to an Icecast server.
Graham did all the hard work to figure out how, so he gets all the
credit. But I did collect the information together in a blog posting
here: http://blog.febo.com/wp/?p=307
I'm also going to update my plug-and-play image file to include this.
It may take me a couple of days to get that ready.
73,
John
I finally had time to package up my OP25 system onto a ready-to-run
image for an RPi3. This is based on the full Raspbian Stretch OS with
GUI, so it's a 1.3 GB download.
It's at http://febo.com/pages/os_images, along with a couple of other
RPi images (one for an NTP time server, another that makes a bunch of
RTL-SDR dongles look like a single Hermes HPSDR receiver).
After downloading, unzip the file (it'll be a bit over 4GB) and write to
an 8GB SD card. Stick the card in your Pi and wait for the desktop to
appear.
This system has Graham's (github.com/boatbod) latest code and if you
happen to live in Montgomery County, Ohio, and have an HDMI monitor with
speakers, you are all set to go. :-) Otherwise, you'll need to make
appropriate edits to the config files and possibly change the sound
settings.
Enjoy!
73,
John
FWIW i endeavor to keep my fork up to date with the max branch so multi_rx should be available in both versions. I've not personally testing it though, so I cannot offer help or guidance on setup and usage.
Graham
For my version of op25 I've just pushed a change to support using hostnames/fully qualified domain names (or straight IP addresses) in the --wireshark-host command line parameter (-W).
Earlier changes include the addition of the source radio id (where available) to the terminal screen, as well as indication of when encryption is active (only applies when using --nocrypt command line option).
by Brett Friermood brett.friermood@gmail.com [op25-dev]
Hello all,
I've been excited about trying the new rx.py since it was first announced
and finally was able to install it last night and was quite impressed.
In the last couple weeks I've attempted to run it on my Toughbooks, running
Debian, but have not been able to cleanly install the python-gtk2-dev
dependency for gnuradio. Last night I dug my SDR/DSP computer back out from
recent desk remodeling and fired it up. I purpose built this computer
specifically to run OP25 and SDRTrunk on Ubuntu with an i7 processor, and
large amounts of RAM, and an SSD.
In addition to updating the original OP25 to latest, I also installed the
boatbod version and spent most of my time running it. It was very nice to
run in CLI only mode which I've wanted to do for a long time. By using the
internal audio server and the "t" trunk-tracking command I was able to dial
up every site I tried within my coverage area and start following traffic.
It has been a while since I've used OP25 so I was midly surprised when I
was able to receive a site that other software will not receive.
I did notice a couple issues, though. I observed a crash when toggling off
a plot. Turning on the plot would work fine, and even trying to turn on
another would produce a warning that only one can be active, but everything
continued running. However, when I turned off the plot the window would
close as expected but then the terminal would freeze. After a couple
seconds "0"'s would begin showing as if there was no data from the SDR.
The only way I was able to fix it was to kill the python process. After
starting again everything would work until turning off a plot. It also
wasn't limited to a single plot as it happened with all of them.
The second issue I faced was when trying to use a trunk.tsv file with the
"T" option. After fixing my .tsv files after the quotes got obliterated it
appeared to load and start running, however only showed a single site's
information at the top of the terminal and another site's control channel
frequency at the bottom. I ran short of time so I wasn't able to determine
if it heard voice traffic or not, but it did not appear to be stepping
through the different sites' control channels as configured in the .tsv
file.
Am I incorrect as to how the .tsv file is handled?
Brett
For anyone interested, I have merged the latest changes to the osmocom max branch into my op25 github fork https://github.com/boatbod/op25 and added the ability to dynamically turn on and off the various plots (fft, constellation, symbol & datascope). These are controlled from the terminal window by pressing the 1, 2, 3 & 4 keys.
1 = fft
2 = constellation
3 = symbol
4 = datascope
Presently it is only possible to enable one plot at a time. Once I figure out how to track and untangle the gnuradio inter-block connections, I will see about making them operate simultaneously.
Graham