Skip to main content

MacOS

There are two main "package managers" used on MacOS: Homebrew and MacPorts. Trunk-recorder can be installed with dependencies from one or the other

Using Homebrew​

Tested on macOS Ventura 13.2 with the following packages:

  • homebrew 3.6.21
  • cmake 3.25.2
  • gnuradio 3.10.5.1
  • uhd 4.4.0.0
  • pkgconfig 0.29.2
  • cppunit 1.15.1
  • openssl 3.0.7
  • fdk-aac-encoder 1.0.3
  • sox 14.4.2
  • pybind11 2.10.3

Install Homebrew​

See the Brew homepage for more information.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Install GNURadio and other dependencies​

brew install gnuradio uhd cmake pkgconfig cppunit openssl fdk-aac-encoder sox pybind11

Install the OsmoSDR Package for GNURadio​

See the gr-osmosdr homepage for more information.

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/gr-osmosdr
cd gr-osmosdr
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j
sudo make install
sudo update_dyld_shared_cache

Before continuing with the build instructions, note that you will need to specify the location of the Homebrew libssl libraries during cmake with -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=, or you will receive an error from CMake about not finding libssl, or a linking error from make about not having a library for -lssl.

This path in Homebrew will differ by system (Apple Silicon:/opt/homebrew/opt/openssl@3 or macOS Intel:/usr/local/opt/openssl@3), but it can be located automatically as used below:

Building Trunk Recorder​

mkdir trunk-recorder && cd trunk-recorder
git clone https://github.com/robotastic/trunk-recorder.git source
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ../source -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=$(brew --prefix openssl@3)
make -j
sudo make install

Continue to Configuring Trunk Recorder.

Using MacPorts​

These instructions should work on OS X 10.10, OS X 10.11, and macOS 10.12.​

Install MacPorts​

Follow the instructions from the MacPorts project to install the appropriate version of MacPorts for your version of macOS.

If you have already installed MacPorts, make sure your ports tree is up to date:

sudo port selfupdate

(7/24/21) Note: this has been tested and works on an M1 based Mac. Some dependencies for gr-osmosdr do not support ARM64 yet and can be removed by adding a -, eg: -docs

Install GNU Radio​

The preferred method for installing GNU Radio on macOS is: 

sudo port install gnuradio uhd gr-osmosdr

Install tools to compile Trunk Recorder​

sudo port install cmake boost libusb cppunit

Install tools for OpenMHz​

If you are interested in uploading recordings to OpenMHz, install FDK-AAC and Sox to convert the Wav files to M4a.

sudo port install sox

Download and make libfdk-aac. extract the source, and cd to the source directory


autoreconf -i
./configure
make
sudo make install

Download and make the command line fdkaac program. extract the source, and cd to the source directory

autoreconf -i
./configure
make
sudo make install

Building Trunk Recorder​

mkdir trunk-recorder && cd trunk-recorder
git clone https://github.com/robotastic/trunk-recorder.git source
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ../source -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/opt/openssl
make -j
sudo make install

Configuring Trunk Recorder​

The next step is to configure Trunk Recorder for the system you are trying to capture.

Running trunk recorder.​

If all goes well you should now have the executable named trunk-recorder, and created the config.json configuration file as described in the Wiki and README.

From your build directory (e.g. trunk-build) you can now run ./trunk-recorder

Runtime options​

Trunk Recorder will look for a config.json file in the same directory as it is being run in. You can point it to a different config file by using the --config argument on the command line, for example: ./trunk-recorder --config=examples/config-wmata-rtl.json.