[Discuss-gnuradio] Ettus Research News

[Matt Ettus]

Ettus Research LLC was founded in 2004 to produce high quality, low cost 
software radio systems, and bring these capabilities to everyone.  In 
the last five and a half years this company, which started in a garage, 
has shipped thousands of products to users in over 67 countries.  Those 
products have been used for everything from mapping the earth, moon and 
stars to tracking wildlife, from teaching signal processing to obtaining 
a PhD., by everyone from individual hobbyists to huge research teams, 
for communicating across a desk, under water, under ground, across town, 
and around the world.

Today, as the next step in the growth of our company, we are very proud 
to announce that Ettus Research has been acquired by National 
Instruments Corporation (NI, http://www.ni.com).  NI was founded in 1976 
to transform the way engineers and scientists around the world design, 
prototype, and deploy systems for test, control, and embedded design 
applications.

Below you will find answers to some questions you may have about this 
change.


What does this mean for Ettus Research LLC and its products?

	For the most part, things will stay the same.  We will continue to 
operate separately from, but as a wholly-owned subsidiary of National 
Instruments.  Our web address, email, phone, and postal addresses will 
all stay the same.  All sales will continue to be direct.  The 
additional resources the acquisition provides us will help us to serve 
you better and faster.

	The USRP family of hardware for software radio will continue to be our 
main product line, and it will continue to be actively developed and 
improved.  We have several exciting new products we are working on for 
release later this year.  We are also working on a new "Universal 
Hardware Driver" or UHD, which will completely encapsulate everything 
needed to control all of our hardware in a single driver.  This will 
enable software developers to use USRP hardware without having to worry 
about the low level details of daughterboard control, kernel drivers, or 
other factors.  The UHD will be cross-platform, allowing use on Linux, 
Windows, and Mac OS X.

What does this mean for GNU Radio?

	Ettus Research will continue to support and contribute to GNU Radio, 
and the combination of GNU Radio software and USRP hardware will remain 
our core focus.  The additional resources that a large company like NI 
can provide will allow us to focus even more energy on improving the 
overall capabilities of the system.  Two of the core GNU Radio 
developers, Matt Ettus and Josh Blum, are employed by Ettus Research.

	In the future we will also likely be providing GNU Radio drivers for 
additional hardware from National Instruments.


What does this mean for LabVIEW?

	The Universal Hardware Driver will allow us to produce high-quality, 
officially supported LabVIEW drivers for all of our hardware.  We hope 
to have those drivers available in the coming months.


What does this mean for those using Simulink, OSSIE, OpenBTS, SCARI, or 
other software with their USRP hardware?

	Ettus Research is fully committed to enabling the use of USRP hardware 
with any and every software platform for SDR.  The UHD will ease both 
the technical and the licensing hurdles which have made this somewhat 
difficult in the past.  We will be actively seeking input from the key 
representatives of those communities in order to ensure that the UHD API 
will fulfill their needs.


Will USRP hardware be sold through National Instruments?

	In the short term, no, all sales will continue to be directly through 
Ettus Research, but in the longer term we may offer some or all products 
through NI's worldwide sales network as well.


In summary, we will continue to bring you high quality, low cost devices 
for software radio systems, to enable you, our users, to create 
exciting, groundbreaking radio communication systems.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.  Thank you for 
your time and your support.

Matt Ettus
President, Ettus Research LLC
address@hidden