Installing software onto the Raspberry Pi- Part 2

Finally here's where we install the Linux software for monitoring the Smart Meter!
Based on the previous work done for the testing on a Windows PC, we are going to need:

• rtl-sdr drivers
• rtl-tcp server
• rtlamr decoder

But instead of Windows sources, we are going to need the ones for Raspbian.

RTL-SDR / RTL-TCP

The following post was extremely helpful in setting up the rtlsdr software on the RPi:

https://photobyte.org/using-the-raspberry-pi-as-an-rtl-sdr-dongle-server/

• First we need to install some packages required by the rtl-sdr dongle server:

$ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install -y cmake pkg-config libusb-1.0-0-dev

• Instead of going to the NooElec website for pre-compiled Windows drivers, we will get the sources from:
  
  http://osmocom.org/projects/sdr/wiki/Rtl-sdr
  
  Fortunately 'git' is already included with the installed OS, so we can execute the following directly in /home/pi to get the rtl-sdr code:

(Note that in order for certificates to work for https access, you must have your OS set to the correct date and time !!

If you need to reload certificates, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35821245/github-server-certificate-verification-failed)

$ cd Documents $ git clone https://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr

• We can now run the following (note it may take some time to complete):

$ cd rtl-sdr $ mkdir build $ cd build $ cmake ../ -DINSTALL_UDEV_RULES=ON $ make $ sudo make install $ sudo ldconfig

• Before we can install the rtl-sdr USB dongle, we need to setup a 'blacklist' file to prevent the standard USB Radio/TV drivers from loading. Create the file 

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rtl.conf

         
         and add the following lines to it: 

blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu blacklist rtl2832 blacklist rtl2830

• You can now reboot the RPi, install the rtl-sdr dongle, and run rtl_test  

(use Ctrl+C to exit the test):

$ rtl_test Found 1 device(s): 0: Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001 Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner Supported gain values (29): 0.0 0.9 1.4 2.7 3.7 7.7 8.7 12.5 14.4 15.7 16.6 19.7 20.7 22.9 25.4 28.0 29.7 32.8 33.8 36.4 37.2 38.6 40.2 42.1 43.4 43.9 44.5 48.0 49.6 [R82XX] PLL not locked! Sampling at 2048000 S/s. Info: This tool will continuously read from the device, and report if samples get lost. If you observe no further output, everything is fine. Reading samples in async mode...

RTLAMR

• Before we can download and build rtlamr, we need to install the go build environment

https://golang.org/

(since this is for the RPi, we will need to get the version that runs on the ARM processor;  
as of this posting, the latest go release is 1.10):

$ cd /home/pi/Documents $ mkdir go_src $ cd go_src $ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.10.linux-armv6l.tar.gz $ sudo tar -C /usr/local -xvf go1.10.linux-armv6l.tar.gz $ cat >> ~/.bashrc << 'EOF' $ export GOPATH=$HOME/go $ export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH:$GOPATH/bin $ EOF $ source ~/.bashrc.

• If all has run successfully, you can now check the go version:

$ go version go version go1.10 linux/arm

• We can now download and build bemasher's rtlamr from

https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr

$ go get github.com/bemasher/rtlamr $ which rtlamr /home/pi/go/bin/rtlamr

• You can now start up rtl_tcp in a terminal session:

$ rtl_tcp Found 1 device(s): 0: Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001 Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner [R82XX] PLL not locked! Tuned to 100000000 Hz. listening... Use the device argument 'rtl_tcp=127.0.0.1:1234' in OsmoSDR (gr-osmosdr) source to receive samples in GRC and control rtl_tcp parameters (frequency, gain, ...). client accepted! set freq 912600155 set sample rate 2359296 set gain mode 0

• And then start up rtlamr in a different terminal:

$ rtlamr 12:39:18.308293 decode.go:43: CenterFreq: 912600155 12:39:18.308772 decode.go:44: SampleRate: 2359296 12:39:18.308848 decode.go:45: DataRate: 32768 12:39:18.308895 decode.go:46: ChipLength: 72 12:39:18.308954 decode.go:47: PreambleSymbols: 21 12:39:18.309007 decode.go:48: PreambleLength: 3024 12:39:18.309058 decode.go:49: PacketSymbols: 96 12:39:18.309109 decode.go:50: PacketLength: 13824 12:39:18.309162 decode.go:51: Preamble: 111110010101001100000 12:39:18.309216 main.go:94: GainCount: 29 {Time:2018-04-27T13:30:44.224 SCM:{ID:49366114 Type:12 Tamper:{Phy:02 Enc:00} Consumption: 3612700 CRC:0xAB83}}

Next steps:

• Configuring the meter reader software