Headless or Standalone USRP Operation

Updated Apr 24, 2023

Reported In

Hardware

  • USRP Software Defined Radio Device
  • USRP Software Defined Radio Reconfigurable Device
  • USRP-2974

Driver

  • NI-USRP

Issue Details

I would like to deploy a VI onto the NI USRP and not depend on a desktop computer to control it.  Can any of the NI USRP devices operate standalone?

Solution

The current line of NI USRP devices require a device with a full Windows Operating System installed on it in order to operate using the NI-USRP API.  They must run using a tethered PC host in this case and cannot run standalone.

Currently the only USRP device which can run headless is the NI USRP-2974.  The USRP-2974 has a Linux RT OS onboard.  With this device, users are limited to LabVIEW FPGA programming with the NI USRP Instrument Design Libraries and cannot use the NI-USRP API.