User talk:Duggabe: Difference between revisions

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=Tech writing presentation=
= Notes on revision / update of UHD and GNU Radio install docs =


This is a DRAFT.
== Documents affected ==


==Preparation==
* [[LinuxInstall#From_Source]]
* GNU Radio Main Page
    https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/Main_Page
* A Newbie's Guide to the GNU Radio Universe
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxAW-WzuNy0


==Background==
* AN-445 https://kb.ettus.com/Building_and_Installing_the_USRP_Open-Source_Toolchain_(UHD_and_GNU_Radio)_on_Linux
* Amateur radio operator since 1953
* Electrical Engineering degree 1961
* Computer programmer since 1962
* Retired 2003
* Started working on GNU Radio 2019


==What is GNU Radio==
* [[Draft-AN-445]] (GNU Radio version)
GNU Radio is a free and open-source software development toolkit that provides Digital Signal Processing blocks to implement Software Defined Radios. It is an entirely volunteer organization with contributors from all over the world.


==Why did I get involved?==
== Reference information ==
I discovered GNU Radio when reading an amateur radio manual. I thought it was a fascinating concept to use software instead of hardware to create a radio. After reading the "discuss-gnuradio" mailing list for a while, I noticed a recurring topic of "GNU Radio documentation is terrible". Looking at it, I had to agree, and decided to do something about it.


==Learn by Doing==
* https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php?title=Talk:Draft-AN-445#Proposal_for_section_%22Installing_the_latest_UHD_toolchain_and_GNU_Radio_on_Ubuntu%22
* When I got involved, the switch to using a Wiki was new. Many of the blocks were just skeletons with no real content. For example, https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php?title=Cvsd_encoder is yet to be documented after more than four years.
** I had to learn to use [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki].
** I had to learn what a block did before I could write about it!
** After the first year of working on them, I had done over 150 blocks and written or updated about 10 tutorials.
 
==Help others to Learn==
I have found that the best way to learn about a technical subject is to study a turorial about it. However, there were very few tutorials, and the ones which existed were out of date because of newer software releases of GNU Radio.
 
==Adopting a Style==
It was rather surprising to me that there was no formal guidance for the style of the Block Docs or for tutorials. As I started working on the Block Docs, I derived a skeleton format which covered all of the items I found in various blocks. That gave a consistent layout from one block to the next. I also got some guidance from my mentor at GNU Radio based on unwritten expectations of how a block should be documented.
 
For the Tutorials, there was much more latitude to create / use my own style. My basic approach was to write for a beginner with only the Prerequisites as a background. Other than that, I used an "Assume nothing" approach.
 
==Some examples==
One of my more popular tutorials is https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php?title=Simulation_example:_FSK Along with that, I wrote the Block Doc for the https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php?title=VCO which is the key block in generating the FSK signal.
 
In doing my work on the documentation, I wanted to make sure that what I wrote actually worked. So for each of my blocks and example flowgraphs, I created and tested them before I published them. For several of them, I created a complete working system using SDR hardware to operate with an amateur radio station. For example, https://github.com/duggabe/gr-RTTY-basics implements an amateur radioteletype station.

Latest revision as of 01:42, 27 June 2024

Notes on revision / update of UHD and GNU Radio install docs

Documents affected

Reference information

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