[hpsdr] SDR Cost Comparisons vs Hermes

[jim goldenberg]

I know the intent of Hermes, as stated in the first sentence of the Hermes description you will find the statement "I had the insane idea of merging the verilog code of Mercury and Penelope into a single fpga!  It puts most of that functionality into a single same size FPGA that is on the Mercury board. 
 
Hermes eliminates components and boards to a complete SDR solution without major added component cost to what Mercury already has, so why does the cost double over Mercury? An SDR solution with Hermes should be significant less, but not when Hermes doubles in price over Mercury.
 
Can the developers chime in here?  Is the PCB layer count or construction technique adding significant cost, or you buying IP for the FPGA, was the estimate wrong?  What gives? 
 
73
Jim, N1KWZ 

--- On Thu, 2/23/12, Dan Mitchell <danmitchell at embarqmail.com> wrote:


From: Dan Mitchell <danmitchell at embarqmail.com>
Subject: RE: [hpsdr] SDR Cost Comparisons vs Hermes
To: "'jim goldenberg'" <n1kwz at yahoo.com>, hpsdr at openhpsdr.org, "'Scott Cowling'" <scotty at tonks.com>, "'Terry Fox'" <tfox at knology.net>
Date: Thursday, February 23, 2012, 7:43 PM









Jim;
I suggest you re-read the description of the Hermes and study the block diagram:
 
http://openhpsdr.org/hermes.php
 
You have missed the fact that Hermes will contain not only the function of Mercury, but also the functions of BOTH the Penelope (or Pennylane) AND the function of Metis.
This therefore creates a stand-alone TRANSCEIVER (transmitter/receiver/ethernet interface on ONE board). 
 
73,
Dan, W0IQ
 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openhpsdr.org/pipermail/hpsdr-openhpsdr.org/attachments/20120223/0dff5848/attachment-0004.htm>