[hpsdr] Radio (Board) Identification

[Doug Adams]

I would like to propose a small change to the firmware of all of the OpenHPSDR-derived radios. The purpose of this change would be to make the firmware update process more automatic and foolproof.

If you look in Metis- How it works_V1.31 you will see that the Discovery packet returns the following:
The payload of the UDP/IP reply frame is as follows:
<0xEFFE><Status>< Metis MAC Address><Code Version><Board_ID><49 bytes of 0x00>

where

Board_ID = 1 byte, 0x00 = Metis, 0x01 = Hermes, 0x02 = Griffin, 0x04 = Angelia, 0x05 = Orion 

Currently the Board_ID field (one byte) is not very informative. If it says I have a Hermes (0x01) is it a TAPR Hermes, an ANAN-100, an ANAN-100B, an ANAN-100D, etc. Couldn't we use the 8 bits (256 possibilities) in this field to be more specific about the radio?

Perhaps to be backward compatible we could reserve the least significant 4 bits for Board ID and use the most significant four bits for a Sub ID indicating which variant of the Board ID is present.

If we coupled this change with a "gentlemen's agreement" to name all firmware files in some recognizable way, something like RadioName_vN.M.rbf ( e.g. ANAN100B_v2.4.rbf ) then it would be possible to write a programmer application that would only show you firmware choices appropriate for the radio you are trying to program.

The current arrangement seems uninformative and error prone.

73’s 
Doug - K3TZR






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