The LimeSDR Mini is a great combination of things: affordable, full-duplex and incredibly configurable. Until recently, though, it wasn’t the easiest thing to get running. Scanning the forums at MyriadRF (the folks who make the Lime products) shows that a number of people have been able to get the Mini working but also that a number have not had so much success.
I was a pre-production supporter of the CrowdSupply campaign and had my LimeSDR Mini delivered in March. At first it was rough going, but after numerous attempts, I’ve been able to get a repeatable installation flow that works on Ubuntu 16.04 and supports UHD and HackRF hardware as well (it may support BladeRF, but I don’t have the hardware to test it).
You can grab the install script from my GitHub at:
https://github.com/paulgclark/grc-install
The git bundle also contains a number of simple grc files to validate your installation versus each of the three hardware platforms. After installation, my advice is that you test things with:
./grc/audio_tone.grc
./grc/lime-test/fm_receiver_hardware_lime.grc
(make sure to tune to one of your local stations)
Next, if you’ve got a second SDR (and computer) you can use the GFSK transmit and receive flowgraphs to send simple digital data back and forth between them. You should be able to send and receive from any combination of the three SDR platforms, though you will likely need to adjust the squelch levels depending on the physical distance between your SDRs. If a HackRF is involved, you’ll also need to fine tune the receiver flowgraph to compensate for their frequency error.
One thing to note about this install flow: you get version 3.7.10 of gnuradio-companion, not the latest as you’d get with a PyBOMBS installation.
Hope this helps!
Addendum: This flow will work for Ubuntu 18.04, but you’ll need to go into the install script and tweak one line per the commented instructions. You’ll also need to adjust the device args for the hackrf transmit flowgraphs to “driver=hackrf,soapy=0” (but do NOT type a space between the comma and “soapy”). A bonus to using 18.04 is that you’ll get a slightly newer version of gnuradio companion (3.7.11).