[hpsdr] Protocol 2 status?

[Scott Traurig]

John,

Development of P2 has apparently reached in impasse: the code seems to have
reached a level of complexity whereby it cannot be successfully built (make
timing) across all serial number radios (and possibly operating temperature
ranges) using the free Quartus Prime Lite development environment. Quartus
Prime Lite cannot perform floor-planning or incremental builds, techniques
that seem to be necessary to obtain success, and its build engine is not as
capable. It would also appear that P1 has recently hit the same wall, as
the latest builds to fix problems with the higher order DDCs do not make
timing on everyone's radio. For example, you can see Joe's note,
"Recommendation to use Orion_v5.0 if neither v5.1 nor v5.2 work on your
radio" right up front at the github P1 firmware repository.

It is important to note that a single seat of Quartus Prime Standard costs
approx. $4K (not including subsequent yearly renewal costs).

Before everyone starts screaming "fundraising" at the top of their lungs,
understand that the root of the impasse is not financial. Certainly there
are many ways to underwrite a couple of seats of Quartus. The root of the
impasse is the idea that if it requires an expensive development
environment to build the firmware then it no longer is open source. This
might not be strictly true, as the code certainly could remain free of any
open source incompatible IP, however it certainly does mean that it is no
longer as accessible as it once was for experimentation. There is also the
learning curve for the developers who have to learn how to use all of the
more advanced facilities of Prime Standard.

If there are any firmware developers out there who think they can finesse
Prime Lite into building stuff the way it needs to be built, their
contributions would no doubt be welcome.

73,

Scott/w-u-2-o

On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 1:04 PM, john clark <n0ure at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> I was hoping to see a first release of Protocol 2 released early this year
> but in looking in Gethub it appears that there has not been any changes for
> the Angulia code since April. Is the code ready for release or has it been
> move to the back of the line for other projects i.e. Hermies II and DFC?
> Unfortunately my coding expertise passed at punched cards to blue screen
> conversion and not many years remain for SDR pleasure.
>
> 73
> John
> TI4/N0URE
>
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