[hpsdr] PowerSDR alternatives?

[Terry Fox]

Phil Harman wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
>
>>
>> What's REALLY needed is a way to interface to GNU Radio.    But one 
>> of the major design problens with HPSDR is that is does not use any 
>> "standard" interface and so will be forever dependent of OS level 
>> drivers.
>>
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a "standard" interface.  The 
> basic USB protocol we established in 2007 has not changed, apart from 
> adding new features, since.  Since HPSDR was one of the first DDC/DUC 
> transceivers I suggest we actually set the "standard"!
>
> One of the problems with USB SDR interfaces is that they are mostly 
> designed for receivers.  When you add a transmitter, and wish to 
> operate full QSK, then splitting Command and Control data and 
> Audio/I&Q data is a disaster. By imbedding C&C within real time data 
> you get the optimum CW performance which has resulted in the excellent 
> QSK performance of HPSDR.
>
> I'm not very familiar with the interface to GNU Radio but it appears 
> to use UDP. In which case the OzyII board presently being developed 
> should be able to provide data in any "standard" that uses this 
> protocol. If you can please let me know what the UDP standard is for 
> GNU I'll look at implementing it as an OzyII option.
>
> 73's Phil...VK6APH
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> HPSDR Discussion List
> To post msg: hpsdr at openhpsdr.org
> Subscription help: 
> http://lists.openhpsdr.org/listinfo.cgi/hpsdr-openhpsdr.org
> HPSDR web page: http://openhpsdr.org
> Archives: http://lists.openhpsdr.org/pipermail/hpsdr-openhpsdr.org/
>
>
I would read "standard interface" to mean jack, alsa, Portaudio, or 
ASIO.  All of these can easily pass data to/from DttSP.  I think that's 
what Chris is getting at.

However, I would not agree that using these interfaces (or DttSP) is 
critical to an SDR GUI under Linux.  Maybe a port of PowerSDR would 
require them (or maybe not), but not other SDR programs.  I must 
remember that the original question was about porting PowerSDR to Linux, 
which is probably not happening anytime soon.  From what I see, PowerSDR 
(pre-version 2x) is too mired in Visual Studio 2003, and not anything 
else is usable.  I bought Visual Studio 2005 to build PowerSDR, only to 
find that I couldn't.  Another waste of $$.  Too many errors to patch 
every time a new version came out.

I just added support for the AMRAD/Charleston SDR Receiver to James 
Ahlstrom's Quisk (under Linux).  I did NOT write most of the code 
myself, but modified James' Quisk to work with John Schwacke's GNU Radio 
interface code for the Charleston board.  While this may have been a 
piece-o-cake for software gurus, it was at the edge of my ability, 
especially since Quisk is written in a mixture of C and Python.  I'm OK 
with C, but Python and it's interfacing was new to me.  Anyway, I used 
the "standard" Linux libusb for interfacing to the Digilent Nexys2 FPGA 
board that is the basis for the Charleston Receiver.  Quisk does not use 
DttSP, he wrote the demods directly in the C code part of his program.

The above is only relevant because I've also looked inside Kiss Konsole, 
which supports the openHPSDR hardware on Windows (independent of 
PowerSDR).  It appears to use a Windows version of libusb, I found most 
of the same calls (as Linux) to work with the actual USB device.  (I'm 
thinking of adding Charleston SDR support to KK) Extrapolating from 
there, one SHOULD be able to use the "standard"  libusb in Linux to 
communicate at the USB level with the HPSDR hardware, and program the 
FPGAs as well.  I also believe that the HPSDR command set protocol is 
well documented and available in the KK area.  KK does not use DttSP, 
but instead uses Phil Covington's SharpDSP.

After a little playing with GNU Radio and GRC, I'm not very impressed.  
I LOVED GRC as an SDR learning tool, but they both appear to me to 
create old, clunky-looking GUIs at best.  Kind of like what a 
terminal-only programmer would want a GUI to look like.  Flat and early 
X-like.  Plus, it appears to be created at least somewhat just to 
confuse the software neophyte.  The levels of code obfuscation were 
enough to turn me completely off.  Try modifying a simple FFT widget to 
alter the display.  I guess it works fine with USRP hardware.  I've used 
it with Softrocks & soundcards and the Charleston SDR.  I went back to 
sdr-shell with the Softrocks, and it's why I went to Quisk for the 
Charleston SDR.

I think the original USRP is USB only, while the USRP2 can use either 
USB or e'net.

After all that writing, isn't ghpsdr available in both Windows and Linux?

Sorry for the long message.  I hope someone does create a decent 
transmit & receive SDR program for the openHPSDR hardware in Linux.  I 
would not wait for it to be PowerSDR.  A shame, because some smart 
software person could probably do that in less time than it takes to 
write a new SDR program.  Nope, I don't think openHPSDR is tied to any 
OS-specific drivers.  Other than Microsoft-specific hosing of the USB 
protocol, the same calls should work on both OS's libusb.
Terry, WB4JFI


 1278828849.0