[hpsdr] HPSDR software direction

[Thierbach, Ed]

I'll definitely leave the interface specs to the pros, but I do have a few thoughts about the overall design.  I think it could easily be flexible enough to allow lots of different devices to connect to the "radio network" (RadioNET?), even though our primary focus would be SDRs.

I actually see three distinct software "blocks" or roles:

1 - Radio interface: 
- connects the radio hardware to the network
- may or may not do any of the DSP processing
- OzyII could have this functionality built in, since it connects to the network directly
- low-cost single-board computers like Hawk, Beagle, or picoITX,
   that may not be powerful enough to do the DSP grunt work,
   could be used to connect USB radios to the network, letting the DSP
   processing happen somewhere else
- in theory, classic "hardware radios" could also be added to the network,
   with appropriate software, using the same single-board computers.  

2 - User interface
- this does *not* have to be "just" a GUI -- it could include a command-line
   interface, or interfaces built into other programs.  Examples could include
   such things as radio-astronomy programs that would talk directly to the
   radio, or programs to monitor for band openings and such.  One of my many
   dreams is to have a program running that would listen for signals on 6m,
   and send a text message to my phone when something shows up.
- DSP wouldn't have to happen here, either; I see lots of value in having
   "light" clients on netbooks and such.  I could even see using an old
   computer as a dedicated "radio GUI", maybe even using something as
   simple as a Curses-based interface for PCs that are too old to run X.
- Heck, I could even cobble together a nice little radio GUI for my Amigas. :-)

3 - DSP engine
- capability to offload the DSP processing
   to a machine that's separate from both radio and user interface.
- this would allow cheap / simple computers to be used for both the
   radio and user interfaces, with a more powerful computer on the
   network doing the heavy DSP lifting.  Perhaps a network file server,
   or a computer used as a firewall, which often are just idling most
   of the time.
- DSP could still be done on the radio computer or the user interface 
   computer if desired

Maybe I just haven't had enough sleep, but I really like the hardware-reuse aspects of having cheap / old computers on both ends (radio and user), and put an otherwise idling computer to work on the DSP.

Of course, all three of these roles could be run on the same computer, If desired.

73,
-Ed- AB8OJ

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