[hpsdr] Simplified Phoenix Diagram Rev 4 - political statement

[Eric Ellison]

Ray/All!

I like it. I have refrained from saying anything during the evolution of the
Pheonix, mixer and LO, but been loving every minute of the discussion. State
of the art stuff! 

However, you are thinking in the 'right' direction, here. The "Building
Block" (Lego's as Lyle says) is the crux of this project. NOT "Stand alone"
solutions. This is the 'proving ground' of the BEST in building blocks made
pretty easy. Even with your previous design, it is not 'stand alone' since
it needs the Ozy. 

In the end there is no reason to believe that the QSD/QSE combination you
are proving here, can't be a FANTASTIC stand alone radio with design
'deriatives' of all three boards. The first 'cut' of any hpsdr design module
should try to leverage as much of the other modules as possible.

At first I thought the circuit boards would by far be the most costly part
of any project, and perhaps the slowest to get. Since I have assisted in the
production of the first two fine boards, the board cost is less than 1/2 the
cost of the AK5394, in modest quantities. Even with minimal 'Mark-up' the
boards are cheap, compared to a number and price of some of components. By
the time you get the first Pheonix to the users, we may have a better or
cheaper A/D then the 5394. (or other parts).

The Atlas buss was the first most significant decision this group made. It
'defined' the promise of 'Lego'. The second most defining moment and
significant decision, (thanks everyone for listening) was the Project card
definition, which will allow for mounting in a PC enclosure and give us 2
other board sides for 'inside world' connections. Project leaders SHOULD
consider these 2 top and rear interface real estate and consider duplicating
some of the 'outside world' connections to the inside world to enable what
you are suggesting here. I think I remember that Phil_C put 20 FPGA I/O on
the rear of the Ozy, might they be used to control an 'inside world' mounted
BPF? Also I took Phil_C to task for another Altera FPGA on the Mercury. He
explained, and was right, right, right! so it DOES need the FPGA on that
board! It shows another phenomena about this group. It is NOT only
engineers, and skilled craftsmen, 'ship in the bottle builders' or any
single area of expertise. It is ALL of us! Keep the designs in the open,
keep the discussions in the open, and it will remain exciting!

It is my feeling that 'leveraging' existing or 'near to come' modules, will
be the lifeblood of this group and keep the excitement which has been
generated here. "No Touch" boards are modest in cost ($51) and take 10 days
to produce. The PCB designers can build on that. 

Let's turn the experiments into copper quickly, like 1 turn and go for
broke. At $5 to $15 bux a board in small quantities, "If It don't work, then
I'll try my SMT hotplate experiments and feel lucky that it only cost me $15
bux for the board to experiment.

Go MAN! Thanks for posting this. Let's leverage the Janus! Run a cable in
the inside world!

Thanks!
Eric


 



-----Original Message-----
From: hpsdr-bounces at hpsdr.org [mailto:hpsdr-bounces at hpsdr.org] On Behalf Of
Ray Anderson
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 11:50 AM
To: hpsdr at hpsdr.org
Subject: [hpsdr] Simplified Phoenix Diagram Rev 4

***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****



After my last posting of a proposed Phoenix RX architecture, Phil VK6APH
proposed an alternate interface between the ISD and the AK5394a A/D.

As Bob pointed out last week, there was a real potential for destroying
the dynamic range by feeding the ISD output to the A/D on the Janus
board as I had originally suggested. In the latest proposal from Phil,
he suggests that the output from the ISD integrators be converted to
true balanced signals which can then be cabled over to the Janus
balanced inputs with very little noise pickup. By utilizing the Janus as
it was intended this eliminates replicating most of the Janus circuitry
on the Phoenix board.

Please see the two block diagrams on the Phoenix Wiki page
(http://hpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=PHOENIX) to compare the two
approaches.

I think we are beginning to converge on a possible solution. Any and all
comments on the pros or cons of these approaches are solicited.


73	de Ray	WB6TPU



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