2.6.9

Added:

• Add "link" method to mirror module and "ln" to drf mirror, to hard link files instead of cop
  ying. When hard linking is not possible (e.g. across different partitions), it will fall back to copying.
• Add drf ln command to link files (hard or symbolic).
• Added option rdcc_nbytes to DigitalRFReader to allow specification of HDF5 chunk cache size (see HDF5 documentation for details). This also increases the default chunk cache size from 1 MB to 4 MB to speed up reading of compressed or checksummed data in a typical use case.
• The sounder/tx.py example script has been updated to accept waveform files in complex int16 format through use of the new --type int16 argument.

Fixed:

• Fixed thorpluto.py, changed the iio.pluto_source to iio.fmcomms2_source_fc32 as the pluto_source was removed in newer versions of iio.

Authors:

• Ryan Volz
• John Swoboda
• Juha Vierinen

2.6.8

Changed:

• drf_sti: Updated to have better arguments (consistent with more recent tools), handle data gaps, and add simple channel sum beamforming.
• thor: Swap order of setting USRP clock and time sources, time first. This should reduce the number of re-syncs necessary with modern USRPs (N3xx, X4xx) in the absence of being able to do a set_sync_source call.
• thor: Put USRP clock, time, and lo arguments into device string, and do not set those arguments after device initialization if they do not change. This means that thor will do less re-initialization of the device settings during startup.

Fixed:

• Fixed Python DigitalRFReader and DigitalMetadataReader for compatibility with numpy 1.23 on Windows (and possibly other platforms with np.longdouble==np.double).

Authors:

• Ryan Volz
• Frank Lind

2.6.7

Added:

• Added the DigitalRFReader.read_vector_1d method for reading data and always returning a 1-D array of the smallest safe floating point type, replacing DigitalRFReader.read_vector_c81d.
• Basic logging support has been added, with the case of failing to import the watchdog_drf module being the only instance of logged information so far. The logging level can be set using either the DRF_LOGLEVEL or LOGLEVEL environment variables. The default level is WARNING, and the watchdog_drf import error is logged at the INFO level.

Changed:

• Renamed the GNU Radio companion block tree title from "gr_digital_rf" to "Digital RF" to better match the style of other out-of-tree modules.
• DigitalRFReader.read_vector no longer always returns an array with a np.complex64 dtype. Instead, the array will always have be of the smallest floating point type (either complex or real) that will safely fit hold the underlying data without loss of precision. We recommend manually changing to a smaller type if a loss of precision is acceptable. The benefit over this function over DigitalRFReader.read_vector_raw is that you don't have to worry about handling complex integer data with a compound dtype.
• The Python package now depends on oldest-supported-numpy instead of just numpy, so that source builds can maintain maximum compatibility with different numpy versions.

Deprecated:

• The DigitalRFReader.read_vector_c81d method is deprecated and will be removed in digital_rf version 3. Use read_vector_1d instead and append .astype('c8', casting='unsafe', copy=False) if a strict return dtype of complex64 is desired.

Fixed:

• Fixed #25 (digital_rf_sink: version check on GNU Radio causes TypeError) by removing the GNU Radio version check since it wasn't actually doing anything helpful anymore.
• Fix thor.py failures when recording multiple channels (e.g. AttributeError: 'list_iterator' object has no attribute 'start'). Some flowgraph blocks were being garbage-collected before/during execution because no references were stored to the Python objects with GNU Radio 3.9+. Now thor.py keeps these references itself.
• Fix thor.py error when setting a stop time with GNU Radio 3.9+.
• Improve thor.py start time tagging with at least the B2xx radios.
• Improve thor.py reliability with stop times by not attempting to stop at an exact time, but instead just stop when we are sure we are past the stopping time.
• Fix stream tag handling in Digital RF Sink and Raster blocks. The get_tags_in_window function is broken in GNU Radio 3.9.2.0, so use get_tags_in_range instead.
• The watchdog_drf module is now compatible with recent versions of the watchdog package, from version 1 up through at least version 2.1.2.

Authors:

• Ryan Volz

2.6.6

Deprecated:

• The digital_rf_get_unix_time function is now deprecated, as it relies on a long double sample rate. Use digital_rf_get_unix_time_rational instead.

Fixed:

• Fix incorrect file bound calculation in digital_rf_get_subdir_file on platforms that have a long double that is different from amd64, notably at least the aarch64 ARM platform. This fixes a bug where writes failed with error messages "Failed to write data" and "Request index M before first expected index N".
• Regularized use of 64 bit integer types and their conversion to Python values, perhaps correcting behavior when compiled on 32-bit architectures.
• Cleaned up compiler warnings about comparing signed and unsigned values.
• Cleaned up testing warnings about invalid values in equals comparison.

Authors:

• Ryan Volz

2.6.5

Added:

• Added start sample to debug printing of 'digital_rf_channel_sink' to complement the debug printing of rx_time tags.

Changed:

• The Digital RF (Channel) Source/Sink blocks for gnuradio-companion have been modified to accept 'raw' input for the start and end identifiers instead of strings, allowing variables to be used. Existing flowgraphs may require quotes to be placed around existing string input.

Fixed:

• The drf_watchdog module is now compatible with watchdog 0.10+. There may be a slight change of behavior (duplicate or out of order events) but the mirror and ringbuffer utilities can handle it gracefully.
• Better error message when no samples are specified with drf_plot.py.
• Fix the Digital RF sink blocks and GRC yaml to prevent an empty array for center_frequencies being written as Digital Metadata (currently happens with default GRC block with GNU Radio 3.8).
• Clarified docstrings (and updated to actual modern behavior) for 'start' and 'end' in Digital RF source/sinks.

Authors:

• Ryan Volz

2.6.4.4

Fixed:

• Fix to drf_plot.py to ignore negative infinity values when autoscaling.
• Fix thorpluto.py for better compatibility when both the libiio python bindings (iio.py module) and the gr-iio package (either gnuradio.iio or just iio) are installed.

Authors:

• Ryan Volz

2.6.4.3

Fixed:

• Fix matched filtering in drf_plot.py to run with Python 3 and use the correct code (not reversed). Also shift the filtered result so that ranges are the same before and after filtering.
• Fix RTI and STI plots in drf_plot.py tool for Python 3. Once again the assumption of an integer result from division rears its ugly head.

2.6.4.2

Fixed:

• Fix an error seen when deleting the Digital RF Reader object (such as on interpreter shutdown) caused by trying to close the cached HDF5 file handle.
• Fix another Python 3 issue with the plotting tools caused by getting a float from division when an integer is required.
• Fix automatic plot scaling in the plotting tools to handle data with NaNs.

Authors:

• Ryan Volz

2.6.4.1

Fixed:

• Fix drf_plot.py, drf_sti.py, drf_cross_sti.py, and drf_sound.py to be compatible with Python 3 by removing use of string module functions and listing dict keys objects.
• Fix the plotting tools to be compatible with Matplotlib 3 by removing use of hold functions on axes instances.
• The thorpluto.py script has been fixed to work with both the released gr-iio version (compatible with GNU Radio 3.7) and the unreleased gr-iio version that is compatible with GNU Radio 3.8.
• Fix an error with thorpluto.py when no mainboard is specified (it should have used the first available.)

Authors:

• Ryan Volz

2.6.4

Added:

• Add the "thorpluto" tool for writing data from the ADALM PLUTO using GNU Radio. This script requires gr-iio to run. Note that this script duplicates some of the functionality of the existing "thor" recorder script, and may be subsumed or arguments may change in a future consolidation.
• Option to use the CMake variable Python_EXECUTABLE to manually set the path to the Python interpreter (useful if autodetection fails or Python 2 is preferred).
• Add stop_on_time_tag parameter to the Digital RF Sink blocks, useful when time tags only happen for USRP dropped samples but the 'rx_time' tag value falsely indicates no drop.
• Add the "thorosmo" tool for writing data from osmosdr-supported receivers using GNU Radio, and add the "uhdtodrf" tool for writing data from UHD devices using the UHD Python API without using GNU Radio. Note that these scripts duplicate some of the functionality of the existing "thor" recorder script, and they may be subsumed or their arguments may change in a future consolidation.
• Add option to force polling for watchdog functions (ringbuffer, mirror, etc.), which is useful as a fallback when the default watchdog observer fails silently.

Changed:

• The thor.py script's stop_on_dropped parameter now includes the new stop_on_time_tag behavior.

Fixed:

• Fix an IndexError when using stop_on_skipped or stop_on_time_tag with gr_digital_rf.digital_rf_channel_sink. If the skip/tag happened with only one data block to be written, the IndexError would trigger upon trying to index to a second data block.