BladeRF

The FPGA-based bladeRF SDR is offered by Nuand of San Francisco. The line includes:

Model	Price
bladeRF 2.0 micro xA9	$720
bladeRF 2.0 micro xA4	$480
bladeRF x115	$650
bladeRF x40	$420

The underlying FPGAs are not fully utilized by the radio software itself, and can thus be extended by the user. Additional products include the XB-200 LF/MF/HF/VHF transverter for lower-range work, the XB-300 amplifier/LNA, and the XB-100 GPIO expansion board. These only work with the x115/x40.

Installing firmware

Upon first receiving a new bladeRF, the bladeRF-cli command will confirm that no firmware is present:

[mocha](0) $ sudo bladeRF-cli --lib-version
2.2.0-git-896d2431
[mocha](0) $ sudo bladeRF-cli --version
1.7.1-git-896d2431
[mocha](0) $ sudo bladeRF-cli -s /dev/null -p
  Description:    Nuand bladeRF 2.0
  Backend:        libusb
  Serial:         ******* 128 bits of hex *******
  USB Bus:        2
  USB Address:    4
[mocha](0) $ sudo bladeRF-cli -s /dev/null 
[WARNING @ host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/board/bladerf2/bladerf2.c:456] FPGA bitstream file not found.
[WARNING @ host/libraries/libbladeRF/src/board/bladerf2/bladerf2.c:457] Skipping further initialization...
[mocha](0) $