[hpsdr] Mercury with USB? Cost? & Dev wannabe

[ceriel at gmail.com]

Lyle Johnson mentioned in passing in his Deyton presentation that
Mercury had been considered with an USB port of its own, which I
interpreted as the possibility of using the card without Ozy and
Atlas. Being on a limited budget this struck me as a wonderful idea,
but I've seen no talk about it at all anywhere else. Is it still being
considered, or has the idea been dumped? Would it still be possible to
leave a few connection points on the PCB where one could add such a
device anyway if it indeed has been dumped?

Further, is there any rough, unrefined guesstimate on how many of my
hard-earned Euros I'll have to part with to get a Mercury of my own?
Are we talking less than Ozy, more, or a lot more? Is having the
device for sale through TAPR seen in a positive light or will I have
to put my neophyte soldering skills to the ultimate test?


And finally, I'm very much interested in helping with developing
things for this project. While I have a good understanding of all
things technology and know the basics of many of the most relevant
things, I do lack specific knowledge and experience of them.
How would you recommend I got started learning the specific things I
need to contribute to this project? What manuals should I read?

-- 
Nos