[hpsdr] An idea for a project

[KA5FPT Paul]

To the community,
Recently while doing some searching on-line I came across the following 
bits of information, and this got me thinking of a project.

First I came across the following while looking up some facts on the 
SDR-Cube - 
(http://www.eham.net/ehamforum/smf/index.php?action=printpage;topic=72022.0)
The writer wrote:
"This is a fantastic development. Finally someone  who actually 
understands that  building a ham radio transceiver on a PC platform is a 
stone age concept.

This SDR Cube  concept is the right one for the future. If Flexradio did 
the same thing their products would be a runaway success. Unfortunately 
the flex groupies like riding around on a horse and cart when hamming 
when they could be speeding around the track on a Ferrari using just 
such an embedded solution.

An embedded control integrated control system for ham transceiver 
without  the MS bloat ware and latency will be the final remake  of the 
SDR concept for hams. This is the first company that has pulled this 
off. The first company that releases an embedded version of the Flex5000 
will be selling  a very popular transceiver.

Lets hope more companies come up with SDR  products like the Cube 
Transceiver using  high performance embedded hardware. Micro controllers 
are  cheap readily available these days, there's absolutely no need to 
use a stone age PC and dinosaur MS bloatware.  The folks behind SDR Cube 
are certainly smart forward thinking people, they certainly understand 
that  the vast majority of hams like playing with  knobs. A SDR box with 
knobs will  have very wide market appeal. I wish them well, lets hope 
that they bring out a top of the range transceiver that blows everything 
away. A  large color screen, 200 watt FET PA and all embedded  hardware 
in one box will be a big hit. Maybe this company will wake Flexradio up 
from their drunken PC/Windoz stupor."


Now I don't agree with all that the writer wrote, but I do understand 
the frustrations that do occur when using Microsoft Windows.  Then while 
doing some research on the BeagleBoard I came across the link to a site 
called DesignSomething.org (http://designsomething.org/). A site "... 
designed to highlight open source software communities and projects that 
utilize Texas Instruments technology."  Among the products was one 
called the Pandora (http://openpandora.org/). An open console hardware 
for gaming but powerful enough to be used for many other projects. I 
started wondering if this could be used for interfacing to the HPSDR. 
But I worried if it had enough power to handle the SDR processing.

Then while sitting back thinking, with a good bottle of dark microbrew 
beer, I started to wonder. Why not off load the "SDR processing" from 
the PC to an external processor? Those who remember the earlier days of 
gaming knows that at one time all we had was the vga chip on the IBM 
motherboard. As games progressed and the need for more video processing 
was required, the "gpu" (graphical processor unit) came about. Of course 
that led to the video card industry, and in turn visually better quality 
games. The two went hand and hand each pushing the other. Well why not 
develop our own "SDR processing unit"? What I envision is that from the 
HPSDR Metis we could use the gigabit Ethernet to feed our "SDR 
processing unit", which would do all of the processing extracting the 
information from the I and Q streams. In turn the "SDR processing unit" 
would be connected to a PC, or any other human interface device such as 
the Pandora, to strictly do information processing. In other words to 
enter frequencies, modes, filters, etc. Since the "SDR processing unit" 
will only be handling SDR processing latency issues should then be 
eliminated.

Of course there are probably a hundred issues and complications that I 
have not thought about such as audio and video processing. And I am sure 
not all will agree that this will make a good project. But what does 
everyone else think? Will moving  the SDR processing from
the PC (Windows, Apple, Linux, etc.) to a separate board help us or hurt us?

Paul Cecil
KA5FPT