[hpsdr] finding more participants / developers

[Joseph Teichman]

I second the comments copied below.
In addition to scattered documentation, I would also chime in on another
difficulty that I found in getting started with the HPSDR.

This regards the availability of the hardware. You can't order a complete
set of kits that will get you started with HPSDR. If you want to get stated
say, with a Atlas/Ozy/Janus set up or Atlas/Ozy/Mercury/Penelope
configuration, you will find that some components are are available as a
kit, some are available completed, some are available just as a board, some
have to be ordered overseas.

If the process of simply obtaining the hardware parts is so convoluted, how
can you expect DSP software experts to jump into it? They may not be
hardware experts. They may not know how / want to / be equipped do SMT
soldering. Even if they could do the soldering, just ordering all the
individual components for a single project is quite a task (in the case were
just a board is available).

As a result, people who are interested in the software side of
SDR experimentation may be driven to working with other designs where the
hardware is more readily available.

This, I also believe, is indicative of another problem that
stymies collaboration. The hardware designs are not truly open and free.
Much of it is available for use only on a non-commercial basis. This
prevents for-profit entities from kitting the designs. Were they able to kit
them or sell them complete, the kits would be readily available and the
start up costs for an individual experimenter and DSP software developer
would be significantly cheaper. This would allow the community to grow and
would foster much more community collaboration, both on the software and
hardware side.

While I am excited about working with SDR and have been researching it and
thinking about it for a long time, I have not yet gotten started, partially
on account of some of the issues that I mentioned above.

My $0.02

73,
Joseph KD1ZZ


On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 8:10 PM, Richard Ames <richard at ames.id.au> wrote:

> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> On Sat, 2009-05-02 at 09:56 -0500, xxxx wrote:
>
> <snip>
> > What do you think needs to be done to encourage more
> > software development projects to go on top of the
> > hardware?
> > <cut>
>
> A particularly germane article just appeared in Linux Magazine:
> http://www.linux-magazine.com/issues/2009/103/finding_coders
>
> I am very newbie to this project but my observations so far:
>
> 1. Need to be welcoming - if there is conflict in the project potential
> contributors will wait / go elsewhere.  Conflict is normal but needs to
> be handled.
>
> 2. It needs to be organised. How is not critical - Linus Torvolds uses
> GIT (see: http://git-scm.com/ and Linus talking on GIT:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8) and a mailing list - that's
> all!  He can - because he is the benevolent dictator.
>
> HPSDR is confusing --- mailing list, web page, verilog web page, svn,
> tarballs, some documentation (some of which conflicts with other bits),
> hamsdr website and storage of bits, array of SW projects (not spoken of
> much in the HPSDR pages), etc.....
>
> One reason I have focused on the wiki: I see it as possibly an
> organising medium that all can contribute to.
>
> You can help me:
>
> Who is the benevolent dictator in the HPSDR project and who are his/her
> trusted lieutenants?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard.
>
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