[hpsdr] Hermes

[Curt, WE7U]

On Thu, 5 Aug 2010, David McQuate wrote:

> Good point -- needing an Ethernet hub / switch to connect a laptop to an 
> Ethernet Hermes and an Ethernet internet connection.  A hub / switch, in 
> addition to being "one more thing to carry", might also require a significant 
> amount of power--possibly a concern in portable or emergency situations.
> Also, in the absence of a router-like device that could provide DHCP, both 
> the laptop and Hermes would need to have their IP addresses manually set. 
> ---So there are two arguments for a USB Hermes.  (are they strong arguments?)

I've long thought that radios, TNC's, and the like should be on
ethernet instead of serial or USB interfaces, so another +1 from
here for ethernet.

At home there's a gigabit ethernet inside the Linux firewall that my
kids and I use for gaming.  A wireless hub is thrown on there for
laptop access and two HDHomeRun HDTV capture devices are thrown on
there that just plain work.  I set up one of those devices to throw
the IR Remote UDP packets towards my MythTV box so I now have a TV
remote over the gigabit ethernet.  It's just too easy to throw
additional items onto the ethernet, as opposed to messing with USB
interfaces.

The ability to put the radio anywhere on my home network or
potentially some distance away on the 'net has real appeal to me.  I
do understand that putting it "out there" on the 'net somewhere
would most likely involve a computer in-between, but a single-board
Linux system is awfully easy these days.

A possible downside I need to ask about:  For laptops that don't
have gigabit ethernet (or 10GB as someone mentioned as a possibility
for the future), will the Hermes interface be able throttle back to
100MB or 10MB ethernet?  I'm not familiar enough with ethernet
protocol to know, but all fast interfaces I've seen/read about seem
to have that ability and seem to autoconfigure.

-- 
Curt, WE7U.                         <http://www.eskimo.com/~archer>
    APRS:  Where it's at!                    <http://www.xastir.org>
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Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
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