Error installing Communication Toolbox Support Package for USRP Radio on offline Linux machine

I am trying to connect an N210 SDR to a computer running RHEL 8.2 and Matlab R2021b offline. This computer already has UHD installed. My online computer is running Windows and R2024a. I downloaded Support Software Downloader for win64 and downloaded the Communication Toolbox Support Package for USRP Radio for R2021b and moved the folder to the offline machine. I followed the intructions on the readme.txt and tried the interactive installation but I encountered an error that it failed to install the UHD Precompiled Library. Afterwards, the communications toolbox suppport package shows in the add-on manager but I am not able to configure the USRP and if I try to define a comm.SDRuReceiver I get an error that Matlab is unable to resolve the name. I tried removing the toolbox and reinstalling with the Silent Installation and don't receive any errors, but the outcome is the same (can't configure USRP and can't resolve the name).

How can I fix this error? Is there a specific location that Matlab is looking for UHD to be installed at?

Answer 1

[Reed]

I reached out to Matlab directly and after some troubleshooting we found the source of the problem: when following the offline install instructions to download the Support Software Downloader for the online machine operating system, it was downloading the corresponding third party installer package, i.e. the Windows UHD install package rather than the Linux.

The solution was for me to use an online Linux machine (used a VM on my Windows computer) to download the Software Support Downloader and therefore download the Linux UHD package.

Answer 2

[Abhishek Kumar Singh]

Hi @Reed,

I am assuming that the hardware setup, including the USRP device is powered on and properly connected with suitable interface.

Firstly can you try checking whether UHD is properly installed and accessible on your RHEL 8.2 machine by running the following command:

uhd_find_devices

You should see the details of the connected USRP device. Refer to the following page for more on device identifcation: https://files.ettus.com/manual/page_identification.html

You can check to ensure that the UDH library paths are correctly set in your environment. You can add something like:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export UHD_PATH=/usr/local/lib/uhd

Sometimes, although very unsual, this may not be updated in MATLAB environment. Hence you can run the following in MATLAB command window itself:

setenv('LD_LIBRARY_PATH', '/usr/local/lib')
setenv('UHD_PATH', '/usr/local/lib/uhd')

Then open MALTAB command window and verify that the support package is installed and enabled. You can execute the following:

matlab.addons.installedAddons

If everything above checks out, you can proceed with to configure the USRP device:

%Replace IP Address for your device
radio = comm.SDRuReceiver('Platform','N200/N210/USRP2','IPAddress','192.168.10.2')

Let me know if it works.

[Reed]

Thank you for your suggestions. UHD is mostly installed correctly as I can find the device using the following command and arguments:

uhd_find_devices --args="addr=192.168.10.2"

Strangely the device is not found when using the uhd_find_devices command alone, not sure why.

As for my original question, I contacted Matlab directly and we were able to find the solution (see my answer).