[hpsdr] WiKi - Experimenters Corner - Artemis

[Terry Fox]

-----Original Message-----
From: hpsdr-bounces at lists.openhpsdr.org
[mailto:hpsdr-bounces at lists.openhpsdr.org] On Behalf Of Chris Albertson
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 3:00 PM
To: Kevin Wheatley
Cc: OpenHPSDR (open)
Subject: Re: [hpsdr] WiKi - Experimenters Corner - Artemis

***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Kevin Wheatley <kevin.m0khz at gmail.com>
wrote:
> ***** High Performance Software Defined Radio Discussion List *****
>
> I have just updated the Artemis block diagram to include a suggestion from
Jeremy NH6Z, where Artemis can now be a 4 port switch as well.
>
> Although comments from Chris & Lyle regarding an Atom CPU solution are
clearly attractive, and inexpensive, I am still contemplating a PIC based
solution.
>
> Please keep the ideas flowing.

After someone pointed out the "bitwhacker" I'm not seeing any ready to
build hardware.

If you list out all the requirements I think basically it's just

1) There is a web based interface where a user can control station
accessories such as an antenna rotor, coax swich and antenna tunners.

2) Web server needs hardware interface to control above devices,
hardware interface needs to be accessable to the web server.

If that is what you want then all you need is that $25 USB device (or
something like it)  and any computer you already happen to have,
perhaps the same computer that runs the SDR software.


-- 
=====
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
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Further, if you prefer a LAN-based solution, there are two devices that I've
found that can provide that, all you need to do add some software(!?)  I
have played with both, in the process of learning how to interface FPGAs to
LANs using the Wiznet chips.  The only issue that I've seen with the Wiznet
chips is that they do not have a block of MAC addresses assigned, for which
I've seen work-arounds.  The Wiznet chip implements the complete protocol
stack, leaving you to interface to it through data reads/writes, and
command/status.

Sparkfun and Saelig both sell the Wiznet WIZ200WEB Web Server Module.  It
has a Wiznet 5300 chip, and an Atmel ATmega128 MCU, and costs about $45.
Too bad it's not a PIC chip, but it's still usable.  Many of the Atmel pins
are used for the Wiznet chip, but several are still available, including a
few analog inputs.  I've not messed with this too much yet, but I did
homebrew up the companion demo board, and it works OK.  Modifying the Web
code looks a little obtuse.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9474

The other, more expensive demo board that I have is made by Digital
Shortcut, the DSX50WZ, for $119.  I believe Saelig also sells these.  It
includes the same Wiznet 5300 LAN interface, and has a Spartan-3AN XC3S50AN
FPGA, a non-volatile FPGA.  The FPGA is small, but it has several pins
available.  This is if you are into FPGAs.  Since it's not Altera, you would
need to use the Xilinx ISE Webpack to do any development.  Once again, the
prepackaged code does some basic stuff, and it uses the Xilinx PicoBlaze
soft core processor to implement the Web pages. 
http://www.digitalshortcut.com/s50WZ.html

The nice thing about the above modules is that both of them have demo
software that runs a sample web page, and in the WIZ220Web case, already
tweaks and reads a few pins directly.

I LOVE the Sparkfun UBW Bitwhackers, and have used them for years, including
when working on the software for the Brainerd 995x DDS/QSD boards.  For USB
connectivity and simple pin controls of hardware, they are hard to beat.
But, if you want to be independent of USB, and one particular computer, an
Ethernet solution is another way to go.

I like the PIC-ethernet chip solution as well.  If you have room for the
e'net stack and the rest of the processing, that would be interesting.

Yet another option is to look at the low-end routers that are being modified
to run Linux.  Using generic router hardware under Linux sounds intriguing,
although that has a steeper learning curve.  Also, those routers change at
the drop of a hat, so planning on a particular hardware configuration might
be problematic.

I'm pretty convinced that USB is not in my SDR future, and e'net
connectivity is.  That's why I started playing with e'net solutions, and
FPGAs. 
Terry, WB4JFI


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