Pi 3 DragonOS successful install and testing - hope this helps

[ImDroided]

Ok so since so many have been having issues I figured I would post what I did to get it working. I am using a Pi 3 in headless mode. I chose DragonOS as it has pretty much everything SDR related already installed and seems to have the highest success rate of getting the Caribou working.

First I downloaded DragonOS from https://sourceforge.net/projects/dragonos-pi64/ I then flashed that to a 64gb sd card and booted up the Pi.

Once in a desktop I opened a terminal and ran

sudo raspi-config

Once in raspi-config I changed its auto login to console only. After that I enabled SSH and rebooted.

If you are planing on using the pi with a desktop you can skip the raspi-config steps. I am running headless over network.

Next I chose a fork of this repository because for some reason the owner of this one still has not taken in the fix for the mirror signal. Konimaru fixed the issue and is still waiting to be merged into this repo.

I then ran the following commands

mkdir ~/projects
cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/konimaru/cariboulite.git
cd cariboulite
./install.sh

Note that the script will complain about the raspberry pi kernel headers not being found on apt-get but dont worry they are pre-installed in DragonOS

Let that chug along and cheer when it finishes.

Next we need to set up SPI and i2c

sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt

find this section and make it look like this......

[all]
# Enable the audio output, I2C and SPI interfaces on the GPIO header. As these
# parameters related to the base device-tree they must appear *before* any
# other dtoverlay= specification
dtparam=audio=on
dtparam=i2c_arm=off
dtparam=spi=off
dtparam=i2c_vc=on

Now hit CTRL+x and then y then the ENTER key now reboot the Pi

From here I used my laptop and SSH into the Caribou. If you are still on the Caribou itself in headless mode just login or if in a desktop open a terminal.

ssh ubuntu@(your caribou's ip)

sudo SoapySDRUtil --find and you should see the Caribou listed

Congratulations its all set up.

Now for the receiving part. I cant for the life of me get anything to connect to SoapySDR but I found a way to get it going. SDR++ or SDRPP as the command goes is already installed and has a server mode that automatically sees the SoapySDR server so I ran

sudo sdrpp --server

Then on my laptop I installed sdrpp from https://github.com/AlexandreRouma/SDRPlusPlus/releases and connected to the sdrpp server

In SDRPP select SDRPP Server as source, input your Caribou's IP and hit connect. It will then show remote source, select soapyremote and the caribou will show up.

Tune to a receivable freq for the caribou tuner you selected and hit the play button.

Auto gain control is broken and spikes the signal so I was getting good results between 22-30 and set decimation at 4-8. I had it at 4 but there is a post somewhere that said 4-8 seems best. Even though the HiF is claimed to be 30 MHz - 6 GHz I was tuning all the way down to 4 MHz listening to shortwave stations just fine with my MLA-30+ active loop antenna. Here is a picture of the 40 meter band

good luck and wile I realize most of my issues are with not knowing how to use soapy properly this at least put my mind at ease knowing my hardware was working. Ill figure out SoapySDR later. Hope this helps someone.