SDR Satcom App Store

1 Introduction

The SDR Satcom app store makes it easy to distribute and install software-defined radio (SDR) applications for satellite communications (satcom).

The app store is provided as part of a wider initiative supported by the European Space Agency in partnership with Lime Microsystems, that is dedicated to:

democratising access to enabling hardware platforms
fostering open source SDR development
accelerating the pace of satcom innovation

2 Requirements

Applications are distributed as containerised snaps which neatly package them together with their dependencies, thereby simultenously simplifying the installation of complex software stacks and the task of supporting a wide variety of Linux distributions and versions.

For details of the supported Linux distros, see Installing snapd.

3 Accessing

To install snaps you need to:

Have snapd and tools available
Configure snapd to use the SDR_Satcom store

3.1 snapd

The snapd daemon and tools are used to provide support for snaps.

Snap support comes pre-installed with classic Ubuntu version 16.04.4 and upwards. It is also the native packaging system for Ubuntu Core.

Solus 3 and Zorin OS also provide out-of-the-box support for installing snaps, while installation instructions are provided for Arch, CentOS, Debian, Raspbian and many others.

3.2 Configuration

Configuring snapd to use the SDR_Satcom store is simple:

echo "UBUNTU_STORE_ID=SDR_Satcom" | sudo tee -a /etc/environment
sudo service snapd restart

3.3 Basic use

To search for a snap with a name containing "lime":

snap search lime

To install sathelperapp:

sudo snap install sathelperapp

Snaps which access a LimeSDR board, or integrated transceiver of a LimeNET Micro or CrowdCell, will also need the raw-usb interface connecting. For example, with sathelperapp:

sudo snap connect sathelperapp:raw-usb

For further details see the Snap Documentation.

4 Current applications

See SDR Satcom Applications.

5 Contributing

If you would like to contribute to the SDR Satcom app store you can either post to the forum or e-mail Andrew Back.