alt Hacker NewsI tinkered with gnuradio back when rtl-sdr just took off (2012ish?).
I had no background in dsp or signal processing and found it so opaque as to be unusuable, even though I saw more skilled folks do amazing things with it.
*scratches head*
Might give it another go.
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I've tinkered with SDR some and did a bit professionally. I always found GNU Radio to fall into the uncanny valley - too GUI to scratch my programming itch but too low-level to be useful for exploration. Between libraries like `pyrtlsdr` and desktop apps like `sdrangel`, I can't seem to find a niche for GNU Radio.
I have to say having just done a very tricky project with a long DSP pipeline in gnuradio, that LLMs are a godsend for getting up to speed on gnuradio blocks. I too found it historically impenetrable, but was able to get a pipeline completed. That said, prepare yourself for a lot of debugging and work to diagnose problems if you’re doing anything of sufficient complexity.
Run through pysdr[0], which I found has the right complexity gradient and the right levels of abstraction for people with technical chops but who aren’t familiar with SDR
New textbook may help
https://www.gnuradio.org/news/2025-01-29-gnuradio-textbook/