[hpsdr] Will there be a Developers guide to HPSDR?

[Bill Tracey]

Answers to some of your questions:

Q: Will there be a developers guide?

A: Don't know -- I don't plan on writing one, I've got too many other 
things to do and I hate to write.  Willing to answer questions, etc 
on the mailing list but  I won't be authoring a comprehensive 
guide.   I'd certainly support someone or a group that wanted to take 
on a how to develop with Ozy

As to finding things in SVN -- yes we are a bit drunk and disorderly 
on our housekeeping.  In general. stuff that is under development 
ends end up under the author's call sign and stuff that is more of a 
'release level' gets its own home.  That is not true for everything, 
but it is the general trend.  The sources for the current crop of 
code being used with Ozy and Janus:

All in one binary tree: 
svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_hpsdr/trunk/PowerSDR-ForJanusOzy-LatestReleasedBinaries 
- this has all of the binary files one needs to run PowerSDR with a 
Janus/Ozy.  It does not contains source code -- the source code for 
the binaries is pulled from the projects listed below.

Janus CPLD code: 
svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_hpsdr/trunk/Janus-CPLDV2 - 
Sources and binary   This is seutp as a Quartus project - open 
Janus.qpf in Quartus

Ozy FPGA 
code:  svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_hpsdr/trunk/OzyV2-JanusV2 
- Source and binary This is also setup as a Quartus project, 
open  Ozy_Janus.qpf in Quartus.  There are also some extra 
binaries  in here (*.hex, *.exe, *.bat, *.dll) that are used to load 
code into the Ozy - they are sourced elsewhere

FX2 source code: 
svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_hpsdr/trunk/KD5TFD/Ozy-FX2-SDR1K-Control 
- Sources and binaries for the FX2 controller code.  This is my 
derivative work of Phil C's original FX2 firmware - the code I added 
was control for the 1 watt SDR 1000's.  This directory is setup as an 
Eclipse project, using the SDCC plugin - see the README file for more info

PowerSDR source code: 
svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_hpsdr/trunk/KD5TFD/PowerSDR/HPSDR-1.6.3 
- Has source and binaries for the Janus/Ozy modified version on 
PowerSDR.  In the long term I expect to merge this code with the 
mainline FlexRadio PowerSDR distribtution so I can get out of the 
merge business

Various Utilities (load_firmware and friends): 
svn://206.216.146.154/svn/repos_sdr_hpsdr/trunk/N8VB/OZY_V1 - Source 
and binaries for Phil Covington's Ozy utilities, original FX2 
firmware etc.   I believe Phil's FX2 firmware is now more advanced 
than the FX2 firmware we're currently using for the SDR 1000 - one of 
these days the SD 1K code should be merged into this tree.  To do 
that will also require some changes to the Ozy FPGA code since Phil 
has changed how the FX2 FIFO flags behave in the newer versions of firmware.

The utils are specific to Ozy and generally (with the exception of 
load_firmware.exe) require the HPSDR firmware to be running on the 
FX2, since in general the utils talk to the firmware to accomplish their tasks

Some of the  utils are:
load_firmware.exe  - loads firmware into the FX2
upload_fpga.exe  - loads code into the FPGA on Ozy
read_i2c.exe/write_I2C.exe - Reads/Writes to the I2C bus on Ozy
read_EEPROM/write_EEPROM.exe - reads/writes the EEPROM used for 
VID/PID on Ozy


Probably more than most wanted to know, and make the project look 
dautning -- it's really not -- just a bit spread out.

Will try and answer some more of your questions a bit later -- have 
to get on to some other errands at the moment.

Cheers,

Bill (kd5tfd)


At 11:14 PM 5/19/2007, Jason Hitesman wrote:
>***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
>First off a BIG thanks/congratulations to everyone involved in this
>project!   The quality of engineering that has gone into this project
>so far and continues to go towards the next stages is simply
>astounding to me.
>
>And while I don't want to delay work on mercury/penelope and other
>soon to follow projects (well...maybe I do...my money tree still
>hasn't sprouted enough to populate my Janus board yet let alone invest
>in the next few boards!) I am starting to think about documentation
>and other uses for some of our boards.
>
>I remember Phil talking about how Ozy is a great FPGA experimenters
>board, and several comments during the pre-assembled vs. kit debates
>about software being where people will really get a chance to
>experiment with this project once the hardware is together.
>
>Given all that...and that I currently only have atlas/Ozy with my
>janus awaiting components I've been trying to familiarize myself with
>the development tools and code behind what we have so far.  But I'm a
>complete newbie at this whole FPGA thing and as such it's a little
>overwhelming.
>
>I've looked over a couple of FPGA tutorials on the net...but most of
>them seem to be based off having a particular evaluation board
>available...or are for other development tools...or only cover Quartus
>II but don't quite go deep enough to help me decipher the code that's
>currently available.
>
>The other problem I've run into is simply finding things in the SVN.
>Rather than code being grouped by project it appears to be grouped by
>user - then project.  So I'm not even sure if I'm looking in the right
>places for current code in some situations.
>
>What I think I've figured out so far:
>
>There are two sets of firmware in regards to Ozy.  There is a .hex
>file which is firmware for the FX2 USB controller - then a .rbf which
>is firmware for the FPGA.
>
>The current code for the FPGA appears to be in the SVN  in the
>trunk/OzyV2-JanusV2 directory.  And I was able to get the project open
>in Quartus and compiled (where I see that the current code is only
>using 13% of the available logic elements in our FPGA so there appears
>to be quite a bit of room for expansion.)  However I'm still not clear
>on where the source for the FX2 firmware is though as I only see the
>.hex file for it in that directory and no top-level directory that
>appears to relate.
>
>I'm also unclear on where some of the utils such as upload_FPGA.exe,
>write_I2C.exe and such come from.  Are these standard programs or were
>they developed for the HPSDR project?  And what exactly does each do?
>If they are just for our project then where is the code for them?
>
>Basically I guess what I'm getting at is that I'd like to start
>hacking at my Atlas/Ozy and am trying to find out where to start my
>research in learning some new skills.  Are there plans to create more
>"low level" documentation for Ozy and/or Janus, similar to what was
>done for Atlas?  I understand that the code is available (and appears
>to be fairly well commented from what I've been able to find so far)
>but tracking down which bits of code are actually used..and in some
>cases where the source for some of that code is buried in the SVN is
>pretty formidable right now which is limiting it's usefulness to me.

<...snip...>

>----
>Jason Hitesman
>N8INJ



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