How to make headless program

[steve_j]

Hi there,

I am familiar with the GNU radio environment, but I don't know the steps to produce a simple software which can run 'headless' in the bladerf, so that only 5V power is needed to make it run indefinitely.

Here's the task I want to solve: I need a simple CW signal generator which changes the frequency (800, 900, 1800, 2400, 2600MHz) every 1 second. Can anybody tell me how to do this...?

Thanks for every contribution.
Steve J

[steve_j]

Dear Jon

Thanks very much indeed for this information, which is really helpful. However, it will take me a while to get familiar with all the aspects and get my task fully running.

I was just thinking if it would be more easier to add a 'host' board in mini format, and I am thinking of the Arduino YUN which has also a small LINUX kernel, and nice interfaces as well. Maybe I would then use this board to make a little display (touchscreen) in order to watch status etc. If haven't lookend into the forum yet - maybe somebody has done this before (like the Raspberry Pi, but a bit more extensive).

I will post any progress here.

Best regards and thanks again
Steve

[jehangir]

Hi Jon,

In my current work I've been asked to get a handle on the bladerf for some upcoming projects, so I've to refresh my NIOS II bearings after working purely hardware, for a long time. Reading this post reminds me of the days when I was working on a NIOS II based MPSOC. If I remember correctly, one had to download the FPGA bitstream (i.e. the hardware) first and then the NIOS executables into the flash. From what I've been reading on the forum, it seems to me that the bladerf .rbf file somehow combines the fpga bitstream and the NIOS .elf, similar to what the xilinx folks do with the microblaze. Am I missing something here? If I'm right, I would like to know how to generate such a .rbf file after I do some modifications to the HW and the Nios II SW.

Thanks.

Jehangir

[jehangir]

Hi Jon,

Thanks for this info. In quartus the rbf file generation utility is under file/covert programming files... and then one can choose .rbf from the "programming file type" drop down.
It takes .sof as input file, I'm not sure if one can provide a combination of .sof and .elf as input to convert into .rbf. Any idea?

Cheers

Jehangir

[jehangir]

Hi Jon,

I finally ended up using build_bladerf.sh by modifying it to point to my nios_system repo. If I manage to find appropriate quartus GUI option, i'll post it here.

bests.

Jehangir