[hpsdr] Software direction for openHPSDR...

[Dave Larsen]

I want to thank Dave WA8YWQ for getting the discussion thread started.
This is exactly the kind of well though out comments that are need to
move the software development of HPSDR forward.  

I feel these comments cover a wide amount of the spectrum of options
with the pros and cons of unique development and multi-platform
development.

My own story is I have some programming skills and limit hobby time.  I
wanted to contribute to this wonderful project from which I have learn
so much.  However the existing code was in a wide variety of languages
and most not commented and a little documentation, most of the
documentation is thanks to Phil VK6APH.  To learn where to start one
need to read 10s of thousands of lines of code.  That tends to
discourage many form even trying to add their part. 

What I feel we need as a way that a new individual can take on a project
they are interested in not having to build the software part of the
radio front to end unless they want to.

One of the wonderful examples we have is in our project already is the
design of the hardware buss and the plugable boards.  This allows
experimenters to suggest a specific board and not have design all the
rest just to have a radio.

My suggestion with Athena is to design and document interfaces between
part of the HPSDR software system.  This needs both specs and examples.
They need not be in the same language.  These help people that are
trying to understand how do I do ...  Then if you want to rewrite the
example that is up to you but it defines how to play, if you want to
play nicely with others.   We have many of these examples already in our
online components the Wiki and svn

I look forward to this journey and the wonderful things we will be
creating in the future.  I feel if we work together, we can build a
radio that none of us could have build by ourselves with many if not all
the modes and feature mentioned. 

I do really like the work of John Melton and I use ghpsdr and ghpsdr3 as
my main radio at the current time.  There are lot of things to improve
it just takes time and volunteers.  I feel that the ghpsdr3 interface
provides our first working interface example.  This along witht eh USB
documentation of Phil VK6APH.  If I also really like Qt and use it at
work.  If I get a break from the documentation I am writting a qtmonitor
that work analogous to jmonitor as another example.

Dave KV0S


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