[hpsdr] Mecury vs. QS1R

[Philip Covington]

On Feb 1, 2008 8:38 AM,  <glduff at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
>
>
>
> Has anyone done a comparison of performance specifications for Mercury vs. QS1R?  (performance specs being features, MDS, frequency, etc., not height, weight, power, etc.) It seems like the two radios are in competition and I am wondering what my first choice should be.
>
> Gordon, KA2NLM

Hi Gordon,

I am the designer of the QS1R.  I also am the originator of the HPSDR
Mercury project.  I did the original schematics for the Mercury, and
the first QS1R prototype became the test bed for this original design.
 Phil Harman has taken the Mercury design and continued to develop,
modify, and expand it, while I have continued to develop the QS1R.   I
do not believe these two boards are in competition.  In fact, Mercury
has directly benefited from the first QS1R prototype - I was able to
rule out using the AD6620 or AD6636 DDC parts because of the dynamic
range limitations I found that those parts imposed in the first
prototype - avoiding at least one alpha run of the Mercury to find the
same thing. It also forced me to develop an efficient CFIR design to
replace those parts and rule out other parts (such as the QuickFilter
chips that were under consideration for a while).  Because of their
common background and use of similar components, the performance of
the two are very similar.  There are some major differences too.

I decided to continue on with QS1R because I wanted a single board
solution - everything needed for a receiver integrated on a single
board.  HPSDR is a more modular approach where the OZY is the high
speed USB interface to the PC.  QS1R has the high speed interface on
board - to note one difference.

73 Phil N8VB

 1201874370.0