[hpsdr] single board rigs *YES* please...

[Tony Langdon]

At 03:31 PM 10/3/2007, Naylor Jonathan wrote:

>I disagree fundamentally with Bill about A/J/O versus a single board. I
>see the hardware merely as a means to do interesting things in
>software, after all it is *Software* Defined Radio, as long as the
>hardware is good enough then it can be left and people can start doing
>the truly interesting and revolutionary stuff in the backend. That is
>where the differentiation between us and Kenwood/Yaesu/Icom will
>happen. PowerSDR as it stands is not the be all and end all of SDR
>development.

I can see where you're coming from, but there is more than one way to 
skin the proverbial cat here.  Look at the difference between Janus 
and Mercury/Penelope for starters.  It's clear the DSP starts at a 
different stage in the overall signal processing.  Having the 
building block approach means we can try different hardware/software 
combinations easily.  Of course, the most useful ones could become 
single board units in themselves, once the experimentation bears fruit.


>What's really needed is people with DSP knowledge, or willing to learn.
>The number of people working on the DSP portion of these projects is
>small, not including people writing yet another SDR GUI. There's a huge
>amount of fun to be had on the software side, but relatively few people
>are having it. I admit it's not trivial to get into, but it's fun.

Wish I had the time and energy for studying DSP.  It's an area that's 
fascinated me, but as I'm in a situation where I have to constantly 
self learn, there's not a lot left over Ironically I did my best 
learning when I was unemployed and could devote a lot more energy to 
hobby pursuits.  Much of that knowledge gained in those years formed 
the foundation of the last decade of my career. :)  As much as DSP 
interests me, I can't afford the unemployment that enabled me to 
learn and experiment last time around. :-/

Now if I won the lottery, expect me to want to learn and tinker.  :-)


>So count me in for the minimalist single board solution.

I think there is room for single board solutions in the future, but I 
suspect I'll find the A/O + (J/M/P/whatever) platform will be more 
interesting for me for the time being.

73 de VK3JED
http://vkradio.com


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