Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Re: About EEPROM and FX2(68013a) USB interface in USRP

[Marcus D. Leech]

On 04/13/2010 03:32 PM, Catalin Patulea wrote:
> ThinkRF (www.thinkrf.com) is also developing GNU Radio compatibility
> for its product. I have been working on this project for a few months.
> We're interested in feedback on the approach we took.
>
> Our board is also an unconfigured Cypress FX2 on power-up, so we will
> have a proprietary utility that changes the personality of the board.
> Once that is done, the board "looks" like a USRP, presenting the
> corresponding VID/PID and responding to the USRP USB protocol.
>
> We chose to have it show up as a USRP "rev 5" to distinguish it from a
> real USRP, of which I believe the latest revision is 4. Is this likely
> to conflict any time soon?
>   
I would have used a higher version number, in order to give Ettus
  more "headroom" for new versions of their hardware, as an item
  of courtesy. In fact, Matts a great guy, you should perhaps just
  work this out between you, so that no "tripping over each other"
  happens, and the marketplace doesn't end up with down-the-road
  grief.

I'm all in favour of standardizing the "wire" protocols used by
  both the USRP1 and USRP2, actually. 
> One of our goals was to minimize the changes required to the GNU Radio
> source tree, to make deployment and maintenance easier and to increase
> the chances of changes being integrated upstream.
>
>   
A laudable goal, and I encourage cooperation, and the development of wire
  standards in this area.  Full-disclosure: I used to be a protocol
standards
  expert for my previous employer, Nortel.  So I'm biased :-)


-- 
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org