SDR Satcom App Store

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

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.

Accessing

To install snaps you need to:

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

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.

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

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.

Current applications

See SDR Satcom Applications.

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.