On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Patrick Strasser
<address@hidden> wrote:
schrieb Moeller am 2011-01-11 07:59:
> On 11.01.2011 04:24, Marten Christophe wrote:
>> matured that time. USRP has been sold in $450 , how one can claim
>> proprietorship on a product which was develop as open sourced
>> hardware project. many of people have contributed to it on Mr. Ettus
> The copyright is at Ettus.
The schematics are freely available, you can produce the PCBs for an
USRP yourself.
It'd be interesting to do this.
> It's not much for the tax-payer or commercial clients.
Why should that be?
I'm not the guy you're replying to but you know you kinda cut this thought in half and replied to it out of context. "It's not too expensive for the tax-payer or commercial clients, But it's a lot for a hobbyist"
> But it's a lot for a hobbyist.
> Why can't there be a open-source community version of a Gnuradio-Hardware,
> about $200 for the material, do-it-yourself assembling, some performance
> tradeoffs (no expensive MIMO connector, cheap FPGA variant) etc. ?
If you want the same performance like the USRP (64MSPS, 14bit, FPGA,
USB, connector/daugterboard system, TRX), you will have to pay the
price. If you can live with less there are options. If you want to start
something new, send your proposal, you'll be gladly supported by lots of
people.
Please keep in mind:
Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast - choose any two ;-)
In other words: A DIY kit is not just the BOM/BOM costs. Its development
time and failed attempts, production costs for a PCB, risk margin for
unsold kits, extra costs for parts in batch amounts (you want just 3, we
only sell it by 25...), shipping costs, packaging, tax/custom. If you
find someone who does all that for free, what are you willing to give back?
Why is it that the USRP was $450, then discontinued to bring out the USRP2 for $700 now it's being discontinued for a new design that will be marketed at $1700? I predict that the next revision after that will cost even more. Even if it's to pay for all the new technology in each design, it's still troublesome that if I wanted the same capability then I'd be forced into paying the ever raising price the longer I wait to buy one. I doubt they're really for me though. Those prices are for commercial companies where that sort of thing isn't even pocket change. It's what they dig out of the couch cushions. That or hams that can afford luxury radios in the $2-4k+ range.
That's the Charleston SDR.
http://www.amrad.org/projects/charleston_sdr/
The creator is a nice person, if you ask for permission you have chances
to build your own.
The AMRAD people have done several batches of this system already for
workshops. ~100$ for the Digilent Board, ~100$ for the SDR board. The
Digilent part is good for a lot more fun, too. NB: John Schwacke, the
creator of the board, has already built a GNU Radio block for this.
Patrick
--
Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast: choose any two
Patrick Strasser <patrick dot strasser at student dot tugraz dot at>
Student of Telemati_cs_, Techn. University Graz, Austria
Max, thanks for the lightlink website, that's an interesting minimalistic circuit and I might homebrew one to mess around with. Somewhat similar to the softrock circuits but with differing components. Same idea behind it though. I've been thinking about building one for the IF of a scanner to receive VHF/UHF ssb signals. :)
73s
James