rtl_433/BUILDING.md

Building rtl_433

Linux

Compiling rtl_433 requires rtl-sdr to be installed.

Depending on your system, you may also need to install the following libraries.

Debian:

sudo apt-get install libtool libusb-1.0.0-dev librtlsdr-dev rtl-sdr build-essential autoconf cmake pkg-config

Centos/Fedora/RHEL (for Centos/RHEL with enabled EPEL):

sudo dnf install libtool libusb-devel rtl-sdr-devel rtl-sdr

CMake

Installation using cmake:

cd rtl_433/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
make install

autoconf

Installation using autoconf:

cd rtl_433/
autoreconf --install
./configure
make
make install

The final 'make install' step should be run as a user with appropriate permissions - if in doubt, 'sudo' it.

Windows

mingw-w64

You'll need librtlsdr and libusb, they are dependencies for rtl_433.

libusb has prebuilt binaries for windows, librtlsdr needs to be built (at least for the latest version, some binaries of older versions seem to be floating around)

librtlsdr

taken and adapted from here: https://www.onetransistor.eu/2017/03/compile-librtlsdr-windows-mingw.html

• install mingw-w64 (https://mingw-w64.org/) and cmake (https://cmake.org/)
  • it's easiest if you select the option to include cmake in your path, otherwise you'll need to do this manually
• download the libusb binaries from https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/files/libusb-1.0/ or from https://libusb.info/
  • take the latest release and then download the .7z file, the other file contains the sources (or 'windows binaries' on the .info website)
• extract the archive and open the extracted folder
• copy the contents of the include folder to <mingw_installation_folder>/include
• copy the mingw64/dll/libusb-1.0.dll.a file to `<mingw_installation_folder>/lib
• copy the mingw64/dll/libusb-1.0.dll file to <mingw_installation_folder>/bin
• download the source code of librtlsdr https://github.com/steve-m/librtlsdr
• go into the librtlsdr folder
• open cmakelists.txt with an editor that knows unix line endings
• go to # Find build dependencies (around line 65) and comment/remove the line with find_package(Threads)
• add the following lines instead:

SET(CMAKE_THREAD_LIBS_INIT "-lpthread")
SET(CMAKE_HAVE_THREADS_LIBRARY 1)
SET(THREADS_FOUND TRUE)

• go into the cmake/modules folder and open FindLibUSB.cmake with a text editor
• find the lines with the following text in them

/usr/include/libusb-1.0
/usr/include
/usr/local/include

• add some extra lines to point to the mingw include folder where you extracted libusb-1.0, making it look like this
  • take note of the "" around the folder names, these are needed when there are spaces in the folder name
  • you'll need to find out the exact paths for your system

/usr/include/libusb-1.0
/usr/include
/usr/local/include
"C:/Program Files/mingw-w64/x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0/mingw64/include"
"C:/Program Files/mingw-w64/x86_64-8.1.0-posix-seh-rt_v6-rev0/mingw64/include/libusb-1.0"

• open a mingw terminal in the librtlsdr folder
• create build folder and go into it: mkdir build && cd build
• generate makefiles for mingw: cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
• build the librtlsdr library: mingw32-make

rtl_433

• clone the rtl_433 repository and cd into it
• create a build folder and go into it: mkdir build && cd build
• run cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" .. in the build directory
• run cmake-gui (this is easiest)
• set the source (the rtl_433 source code directory) and the build directory (one might create a build directory in the source directory)
• click configure
• select the grouped and advanced tickboxes
• go into the librtlsdr config group
• point the LIBRTLSDR_INCLUDE_DIRS to the include folder of the librtlsdr source
• point the LIBRTLSDR_LIBRARIES to the librtlsdr.dll.a file in the <librtlsdr_source>/build/src folder
  • that's the one you've built earlier
• edit CMAKE_C_STANDARD_LIBRARIES to include -lws2_32 (this is for winsocks2)
• start a mingw terminal and run mingw32-make to build
  • when something in the tests folder doesn't build, you can disable it by commenting out add_subdirectory(tests) in the cmakelists.txt file in the source folder of rtl_433
• rtl_433.exe should be built now
• you need to place it in the same folder as librtlsdr.dll and libusb-1.0.dll (you should have seen both of them by now)
• good luck!