This is a simple application that allows single-dish radio astronomy,
  collecting both total-power and spectral data in real time from a
  SDR device--either a UHD device or a RTL-SDR device.

INSTALL
=======

Once you've fetched the source (of which this file is a part), you can:

make
make install

If you don't already have 'pyephem' on your system, you'll need to install it.

The home page for pyephem is here:

http://rhodesmill.org/pyephem/

You'll need to make certain that both your PATH and PYTHONPATH variables
  include $HOME/bin, since this application installs parts of itself there,
  rather than in the system directories.  Your .bashrc is the usual place
  to put these variable settings.

USAGE
=====

Once it's installed, and you have your PATH and PYTHONPATH set appropriately,
  you can use:

simple_ra --help

To get help on the command-line parameters

DEVICE NAMING
=============

The --devid parameter accepts a device name in the format used by the gr-osmodr
  "generic" source block, which supports a number of device types, including
  UHD and RTLSDR devices.  This application is only set up to use the
  UHD and RTLSDR devices.

For an RTLSDR device, you use:

--devid rtl=0   for the first RTLSDR device
--devid rtl=1   for the second RTLSDR device

If you have a E4K tuner on your RTLSDR, you can (and probably should) specify
  the "offset_tune" parameter:

--devid rtl=0,offset_tune=1

For an ETTUS UHD-type device (USRP family), you use:

--devid uhd=a,type=b100,subdev=A:0
--devid uhd=a,addr=192.168.10.2,subdev=A:0
--devid uhd=a,type=usrp1,subdev=A:0

DATA FILES
==========

This application produces data files in a directory called "simple_ra_data"
  in your home directory.

Files will accumulate there of two types:

tp-YYYYMMDD-HH.dat

Which contains total-power data

and

spec-YYYYMMDD-HH.dat

Which contains spectral data

total-power data format:

HH:MM:SS HH:MM:SS data-value

The first time column is UTC, the second is LMST.  The data value is a simple
  floating-point number from the detector output.

There will also be an occasional PARAMS block:

PARAMS tuned-frequency detector-bandwidth declination

The spectral data has a similar format.

Data lines are:

HH:MM:SS HH:MM:SS [ multiple lines of FFT magnitude values ]

There is also a PARAMS block in the same format as the total-power PARAMS block

POST-PROCESSING SCRIPTS
=======================

There are two scripts that can be used to post-process both total-power and spectral data from the files produced in 'simple_ra_data'.

The 'process_simple_tpdat' script is used to process total-power files and
  produce a graph in a ".png" file.

Usage: process_simple_tpdat HH:MM:SS hours-width title output-file <files>

Example:

process_simple_tpdat 20:00:00 4.0 "GP Transit" gp-transit.png \
	~/simple_ra_data/tp-20130125-*.dat ~/simple_ra-data/tp-20130126*.dat

This would produce a plot of the data +/- 2.0 hours centered at an LMST
  of 20:00:00 in a file called 'gp-transit.png'

Similarly, spectral data can be processed, using the 'process_simple_specdat'
  script:

Usage: process_simple_tpdat [-u]|-s] HH:MM:SS HH:MM:SS title outfile <files>

Here, we give a time range specified by the two HH:MM:SS parameters. That
  time range is interpreted either as a UTC time, when you specify -u, or
  a sidereal time, when you specify -s.

Example:

process_simple_specdat -s 19:30:00 19:33:00 '21cm spectrum' spectrum.png \
	~/simple_ra_data/spec-20120501*.dat