[hpsdr] Hermes II Specs and Progress

[Marc Lalonde]

On 21/01/2018 2:41 PM, Nick Uchalik wrote:
> I ask, because it appears that there are a lot of competing requests for capabilities.
HI totally agree , i past 3-4  year i have try to work on something ,but 
each time it talk about it  ,got lot of request to add stuff
and at the end project trashed since differ to much form desired target 
,or go over complicated to fit all request

so on my side i chose to work undercover until hardware is complete and 
debugged
and who knot probably will have someday something to show ,   next month ;-)

my personal opinion

PCIe  is really nice ,but more that 1 lane and problem start very 
quickly  (IPcore and else )
but if you limit to 1 lane ,it easy to do whit some nice PCIe "helper" 
chip ,so may use smaller FPGA and keep free version of FPGA tool
Gigabit Lan is cost effective so wly not keep it ,at least for debug or 
segond port

LTC2208/2209 seem hard to beat  , in cost / performance

someday best solution is keep it simple ,keep Hermes RF part , glue it 
to a  "killer" FPGA SOC  ,Gigabit LAN  ,whit wly not a single lane PCIe
need 15 receiver , use 15 of that card ,got in bonus 15 , transmitter 
;-)   ,PC have all audio and power supply need  ,let user put power-amp 
/transverter it want/need

but again it only my opinion

Best regard
Marc  VE2PN