[hpsdr] Software direction for openHPSDR...

[David McQuate]

Let's see if we can get Dave KV0S' Athena project going!

I'd like to nominate John Melton's ghpsdr3 server as one of the blocks 
in a modular software system for HPSDR.  It's written in pure C, so can 
potentially run on any OS.  With a few fixes it compiles both on Linux 
and on Windows (Visual Studio).  It may be possible to port it to MinGW 
on Windows.  (Does Net Beans do C / C++  ?)  The server takes care of 
all the hardware-dependencies, and handles multiple simultaneous 
receivers.  It does this by de-multiplexing the I & Q data stream sent 
over the USB by Ozy, and sending the I&Q data to independent DSP modules 
using UDP ethernet packets.  It recognizes a few commands that allow it 
to send control data back to Mercury.  It also sends audio to Ozy / 
Mercury for headphone / speaker output.

Potential improvements:  A few added commands would allow changing 
Mercury's input attenuator, ADC random & dither options, and sample 
rate. The audio output currently works for only Rx 0.  (For the moment 
that's not a problem because jmonitor directs demodulated audio to the 
computer's sound card output.)  There's some odd behavior if Rx 0 is not 
the first one started.  Tx is currently not supported.

Are there situations or uses that would need something different?

I guess my 2nd nomination would be John's dspserver, that makes 
available a lot of the functionality of the DttSP signal processing 
package,  taking care of so many details of Rx and Tx for CW and SSB.  A 
few improvements might be made here, too.  One is to generate CW Tx 
samples directly (without FFT) as Phil does in KK.

What about modules for all the digital modes, for slow-scan, DRM, even 
D-star (?) ?

There have been contributions to HPSDR from many.  One that comes to 
mind is extra-long FFT sizes for work with really weak signals, and 
increased spectrum display frequency resolution by W3SZ (Roger Rehr).  
And, of course, PowerSDR does so much.  I'd see having a goal for HPSDR 
software the ability to make all these capabilities available to anyone 
interested in using them, regardless of OS.

I think platform portability is very desirable.  When there's no GUI 
involved C or C++ is easy.  GUI is still a very sticky problem.  I have 
yet to get anything written using Qt or GTK+ to compile on Windows.  
That's maybe more a function of getting all the needed libraries to 
compile / run on Windows.  Can we simplify somehow?

73,
Dave   wa8ywq

Ken N9VV wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> Hi Pete, one of the most useful things you could do is to abandon C#. 
> It is a proprietary M$ language and is not portable to other platform. 
> Please consider C++/Qt or C++/GTK+ or Java with C as John Melton has 
> done. Perhaps you could select a portable IDE as well (like NetBeans. 
> At least then there is some hope of portability for the many 
> MAC/LIN/WIN members of OpenHPSDR.
> ----------------------------------
> And then of course there is the Python/Qt engineering that Bob Cowdery 
> G3UKB has presented to us.
> -----------------------------------
> Dave KV0S has started the design of a software architecture for 
> OpenHPSDR. I assume you have read his wiki page:
> http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=ATHENA
> -----------------------------------
> Of course you realize that John Melton also ported a data access 
> channel for us using the *gnuradio* modules. I believe this was a 
> breakthrough that could bring hundreds of USRP members into the 
> OpenHPSDR camp. But for some unexplained reason, John has not received 
> any recognition for his groundbreaking work. *Gnuradio-Companion* has 
> a unique "Flow Graph" language that is fascinating and seemingly very 
> powerful. I do not see any discussion or excitement about the 
> delicious possibilities it presents.
> -----------------------------------
> Leif Asbrink <leif at sm5bsz.com> has shown a passing interest in 
> OpenHPSDR and that would give us an opening to his superb Linrad 
> algorithms and modules.
> -----------------------------------
> thank you for your consideration,
> GN/GB
> 73 de Ken N9VV
>
>
> On 8/2/2010 7:10 PM, n3evl wrote:
>> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>>
>> I was thinking of firing up the KISS s/w and possibly digging into the
>> source code to see what's there and what makes it tick. It occurred to
>> me that maybe instead, I should look at some of the other s/w such as
>> the mods to PowerSDR or the ghpsdrx code.
>> With all the variety of choices and their different stages of
>> development, this got me thinking about the direction we hpsdr users are
>> headed with respect to the software part of our wonderful radio. It
>> strikes me that AFAIK, there has never been a purely software project to
>> complement all of the various hardware items that openHPSDR has yielded
>> to date.
>>
>> I'm also wondering what a newcomer to openHPSDR might make of this,
>> having seen the available hardware offerings.
>> Perhaps all we need is some consolidation of information on what's
>> available for various platforms and an easy way to get at the associated
>> documentation so anyone can find the binaries, source code, installation
>> guides etc. - perhaps a dedicated section of the web/wiki?
>> However, perhaps it is also time for some discussion about the
>> possibilities and future direction with respect to the software, perhaps
>> along the lines of a dedicated project that can define some goals and
>> hopefully meet the needs of the diverse community with respect to
>> function, languages, operating systems, servers, clients, etc. but also
>> keep in mind the HP part of openHPSDR.
>>
>> In the meantime, I'd still like to grab the latest KISS code, so if
>> someone can point me at the latest incantation I'd appreciate it.
>> Pete, N3EVL
>>
>>
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