[Discuss-gnuradio] Welcome and brief update

[Eric Blossom]

I'd like to extend a welcome to all the new subscribers.

Although the list has been relatively quiet, there's been a lot going
on behind the scenes.  Matt and I and the others who've been working
on GNU Radio have agreed to move the bulk of our discussions to the
list, so everybody is more included.

We're putting together a Wiki (user editable web site) for discussion,
FAQs, ideas, brain storming and project coordination that should make
it easier for folks to contribute and see what others are up to.  Look
for that in a week or so.

As far as I can tell we've got folks with a wide variety of
backgrounds on the list.  We've got radio folks without much
experience in software, we've got software folks who are interested,
but don't know much about radio, we've got industry lurkers, students
as well as generalists.

Here are a few areas where we can use help:

(1) RF Hardware design: to make GNU radio more accessable for those
without high speed A/D hardware, we'd like one of you RF guys to
design a simple RF front end that could be directly hooked to one of
the "HiFi" 96 KHz sampling rate sound cards.  Please make it simple
and buildable out of things that anybody can order from mini-circuits,
digikey, etc.  The idea is not to build the greatest piece of RF
hardware ever, but to build something minimalist that actually works.
Perhaps a basic 2M or 70cm downconverter.

(2) CORBA expert: We're currently investigating what's the right
remote control paradigm for GNU Radio.  I'd like to talk to somebody
who's got deep knowledge and experience with CORBA (or some better
idea) who can help me evaluate our options for glueing CORBA into a
real time runnning system.

(3) ATSC Equalizer expert: If you happen to be one, or are good on
comms theory and practice, we'd love to talk to you or have your
direct involvement.  We can provide gigabytes of off the air samples,
so you won't need any RF hardware.

(4) Examples and "HOWTOs": We could use some simple applications,
perhaps some that are complete simulations (no hardware required), and
instructions on how to use them.  "Getting Started with GNU Radio"
(Yes, I understand that we're a bit of moving target...)

If you've got other ideas, please jump in.

Again, welcome to all.  With the ground work that's been laid, we have
a great opportunity to expand the GNU Radio community of users and
developers this coming year.

Eric