The toolchain is the set of tools used to prototype or run a Cortexlab experiment.

Actually, there is theorically almost no constraint at all on the toolchain that experimenters could use, since the workflow of execution of an experiment on each node is basically the following:

• unpack the task file on the node
• execute the entry point of the task

Thus, users, may pack whatever they want in their task file.

That said, the cortexlab team provides a standard toolchain, which we call the CorteXlab toolchain, which is maintained, supported, and which is well adapted to our platform. This toolchain is made of the following components:

• gnuradio
• some gnuradio additional modules / blocks, such as blocks which interface with the radio hardware (uhd for usrp and similar blocks to interface with picosdr nodes)
• some gnuradio additional modules adding convenient tools, which we decided to incude, such as gr-iqbal.
• software for supporting the picosdr: xilinx ise, digilent hs2 (the jtag used on the cortexlab nodes) and adp from nutaq.
• custom CorteXlab software such as fft-web (fftweb).

This toolchain is installed on the CorteXlab nodes as well as on the CorteXlab frontend airlock. It is regularly updated and versionned (current version, at the date of this writing is v1.4).

The building of this toolchain is completely automated by the cxlb-build-toolchain script. Users can use this script to build a similar toolchain on their workstation.

This script has an integrated help. Try running:

$ cxlb-build-toolchain --help

The only limitation is that this script is only supported on recent (stable or testing) linux debian 64 bits. Running it in another environment may be possible with some limitations. For example, it's quite straightforward to run it under a recent ubuntu 64 bits, a few package names will need to be adapted. On the other hand, it won't work at all on a 32 bits system or under windows or macos.