[hpsdr] Potential New openHPSDR Project

[Phil Harman]

All,

There seems to be some interest in building a  Microprocessor/DSP board
that will plug into the Atlas bus and enable an openHPSDR system to
operate without the need to have a PC connected.

Whilst one option would be to design and manufacture our own board from
scratch, which would be an interesting and challenging project, another is
to build on existing work by others.

The Beagle board  (http://beagleboard.org/) looks like a suitable
candidate since it has both an OMAP3530 processor and TMS320C64x+™ DSP.

It also appears that some SDR support is already available in that dttSP
has been ported and support for the SoftRock exists.

In terms of getting data into the DSP from the Atlas bus there is an
McBSP3 interface, which I understand can be configured as I2S, that
connects directly to the DSP.

The suggestion is that we design a simple, low cost, mother board that
will take a Beagle board and enable it to be interfaced to the Atlas bus.

This would be along the same lines as what the USRP folks are doing here:

http://members.cox.net/ebrombaugh1/embedded/beagle/beagle_fpga.html

We can also build on ideas from the BeagleBrick announced at Dayton this
year:

http://beagleboard.org/project/BeagleBrick/

Kevin, M0KHZ, has available to layout a suitable PCB and I'd be happy to
develop any FPGA code that may be required.

Is there any interest in such a project and anyone willing to be the
project leader please?

73's Phil....VK6APH