Introduction: Building SDR++ From Source Code on a Raspberry PI 4 4GB

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About: TekMaker is a channel designed to help people of all ages and abilities to learn about and build projects for Computers and Electronics. I worked in Electronics for 25+ years including design work and been in…

I wanted to use SDR++, The bloat-free SDR software on my Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and found an article to do so.


Supplies

Raspberry PI 4 4Gb or better, you may get away with a 2GB too, let me know!

Step 1: The Issue

Here is the link to my video for this https://youtu.be/DJfWr0Wvxq8

This assumes that you have already installed your SDR drivers, for the RTL-SDR I use the Osmocom ones from https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide/

Having found how good SDR++ is on Windows 11, I wanted it on my Raspberry PI 4 too. I did find a YouTube article from 2021 by Kevin Loughin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNhh9eueYZg&t=2s who used Alexandre Rouma's install script and source code https://github.com/AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus/

Kevin was using an older version of Raspberry Pi OS and also discovered that the installation script had been written blind (untested) and had a couple of issues, he referred to cloning direct from GitHub which is common practice, but that command was simply missing. No matter, I managed to change the commands script as below and started to compile it myself discovering that the Volk software v1.0 was no longer available. A helpful bash message informed me that v2 was available and I changed the script for that. I also had to include sudo and a mkdir for the CMake folder and set those permissions for it to work. After a very long wait and a few edits as I am running the current version of Raspberry PI OS 32 bit Buster. I compiled it for an RTL-SDR, but you can change one command and compiling for other versions should be really straightforward.

Step 2: I Scripted It!

My script for the RTL-SDR is below, I will put this on my GitHub too. 

https://github.com/TekMaker/SDRplus

[code]

#!/bin/sh

set -e

[ $(id -u) = 0 ] && echo "Please do not run this script as root" && exit 100

echo "Installing dependencies"

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y build-essential cmake git libfftw3-dev libglfw3-dev libglew-dev libvolk2-dev libsoapysdr-dev libairspyhf-dev libairspy-dev \

libiio-dev libad9361-dev librtaudio-dev libhackrf-dev librtlsdr-dev libbladerf-dev liblimesuite-dev p7zip-full wget

git clone https://github.com/AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus

cd SDRPlusPlus

echo "Preparing build"

sudo mkdir -p build

cd build

sudo mkdir -p CMakeFiles

cmake .. -DOPT_BUILD_RTL_SDR_SOURCE=ON

echo "Building"

make

echo "Installing"

sudo make install

echo "Done!"

[/code]


Save this file as rpi_install.sh

then

[code]chmod +x rpi-install.sh

./rpi_install.sh[/code]

If it doesn't go smoothly try entering the commands one line at a time into the terminal, you can skip the echo commands. I have built this on two installs so far with no problems.

Step 3: Other SDR Versions


If you want to compile for other radios either edit or add extra lines like this one "cmake .. -DOPT_BUILD_RTL_SDR_SOURCE=ON", for more information about this go to the Module List, and look for the Sources list on the github page https://github.com/AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus/blob/master/readme.md.


Let me know how you get on with this!