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HackRF OSX Install

This will walk you through getting HackRF to work on OSX. It is really just an adaptation of the awesome collection of Homebrew recipes from Titanous for getting GNU Radio running on OSX.

Installation

These steps have been tested on Mountain Lion 10.8.4 with Xcode 4.6.3. It is probably a good idea to make sure all OSX updates have been applied and Xcode is up to date. Also, probably good to install the Xcode command line apps as explained over atStackoverflow.

• Install Homebrew if you haven't already

  ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

  or if you already have it installed, update and upgrade everything:

  brew update
  brew upgrade

• After that is done run the following to make sure you have no issues with your setup, cleanup anything it catches

  brew doctor

• Add this line to your profile (ie ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshenv) and reload your profile (source ~/.profile or exec $SHELL)

  export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH

• Install the python package prerequisites

  brew install python gcc swig

• Install the prerequisite python packages

  pip install numpy==1.5.1 Cheetah lxml
  pip install https://github.com/scipy/scipy/archive/v0.12.0.tar.gz
  export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/X11/lib/pkgconfig" 
  pip install https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/matplotlib/matplotlib/matplotlib-1.2.1/matplotlib-1.2.1.tar.gz

• Install wxmac 2.9 with python bindings

  brew install wxmac --python

• Install gnuradio

  brew tap robotastic/homebrew-hackrf
  brew install gnuradio --with-qt

• Install HackRF Libraries

  brew install hackrf

• Create the ~/.gnuradio/config.conf config file for custom block support and add this into it

  [grc]
  local_blocks_path=/usr/local/share/gnuradio/grc/blocks

• Install HackRF & RTL-SDR related blocks

  brew install rtlsdr gr-osmosdr gr-baz --HEAD

• If you want a graphic interface to play with your HackRF, GQRX is great To install it:

  brew install --HEAD gqrx

  To run:

  gqrx

  And then configure it to use the HackRF. Probably best to start the sample rate at 1000000 until you know how much your system can handle.

Congratulations!!

Everything should now be working. It is time to give it a try! Below are some of the programs you can try

gnuradio-companion
osmocom_fft -a hackrf

##Troubleshooting

• Matplotlib

  If you get the following type of errors installing matplotlib:

  error: expected identifier or '(' before '^' token

  Try the following:

  export CC=clang
  export CXX=clang++
  export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/X11/lib"
  export CFLAGS="-I/usr/X11/include -I/usr/X11/include/freetype2"

  From Stackoverflow via @savant42

• Uninstall Homebrew If you think you have some cruftiness with Homebrew, this Gist will completely uninstall Homebrew and any libraries it may have installed. Of course if you are using Homebrew for other things you could make a mess of your life.

  This Gist is from the Homebrew FAQ

  Then finish the clean-up with these steps

  rm -rf /usr/local/Cellar /usr/local/.git && brew cleanup
  rm -rf /Library/Caches/Homebrew
  rm -rf /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages