Installing using conda

gr-satellites and GNU Radio can also be installed using conda, in Linux, macOS, and Windows. Conda is a multiplatform open-source package management system that can install packages and their dependencies in different virtual environments, independently from the rest of the packets installed in the OS. Using conda is the easiest and recommended way of installing gr-satellites in Windows.

This section shows how to install miniconda, GNU Radio, and gr-satellites from scratch.

Miniconda

Miniconda is a minimial installer for conda, so it is the recommended way to get GNU Radio and gr-satellites quickly running in an OS that does not have conda already installed. Miniconda can be installed by downloading and running the installer for the appropriate platform from Miniconda’s page. The installer can be run as a regular user. It does not need root access.

After installing Miniconda, its (base) virtual environment will be active by default. This means that (base) will be shown at the beginning of the command line prompt and software will be run from the version installed in the (base) virtual environment (when it is installed), and otherwise from the OS.

Users might prefer to run things from the conda virtual environment only upon request. To disable the activation of the (base) environment by default, we can run

$ conda config --set auto_activate_base false

When the (base) environment is not enabled by default, we can enter it by running

$ conda activate base

and exit it by running

$ conda deactivate

When the (base) environment is activated, the prompt will start by (base). The (base) environment needs to be activated in order to install applications through conda into this environment, and also to run applications that have been previously installed in this environment.

GNU Radio

To install GNU Radio, the (base) environment (or another conda virtual environment) needs to be activated as described above. Installing GNU Radio and all its dependencies is as simple as doing

$ conda install -c conda-forge gnuradio

Then GNU Radio may be used normally whenever the virtual environment where it was installed is activated. For instance, it is possible to run

$ gnuradio-companion

gr-satellites

gr-satellites needs to be installed into a virtual environment where GNU Radio has been previously installed (the (base) environment, if following the instructions here). To install gr-satellites and its dependecies, we do

$ conda install -c conda-forge gnuradio-satellites

After installation, the gr_satellites command line tool might be run as

$ gr_satellites

(provided that the virtual environment where it was installed is activated) and blocks from gr-satellites may be used in GNU Radio companion.

It might be convenient to download the sample recordings manually.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ryan Volz and Petrus Hyvönen for their work in putting together recipies to install gr-satellites and its dependencies through Conda and for helping me make gr-satellites build on Windows.