21–30 of 48 posts
I think the USRP1 motherboard, when I originally used one in 2008, used to be $700 complete/$550 for the motherboard. The price now is $719, but that includes the enclosure, cables, power supply, etc... I actually cut my teeth on Python learning GNURadio.
I am curious; what would one actually do with this device once it is working? This is a really neat sounding project.
Transmit or receive analog or digital information on just about any frequency : audio/voice (including multichannel), video, GPS, telecommunications, data transmission, synchronization, module configuration, etc. etc. etc. Sky's the limit.
Until you get a bigger antenna ;-)
Hey! I'm Lukas, the guy who made this. Just discovered someone posted it on Hacker News, pretty exciting for me. If you want to ask me any questions or make comments, I'm here and on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/4uic5r/sdr_pla...
Just a quick note to say how impressive this project is, and that it was fun to read your detailed writeup. Thanks for sharing, it's inspiring and a neat bit of engineering on a lot of levels. I learn as much from mistakes (usually my own, but sometimes of others) so I'm glad you shared those, too. One question: If you had to start over on this project, what would you do differently? (I am going to guess you would go…
I also had done more revisions of the board and spent way more money than I initially planned for... even though in hindsight, having only three revisions for a fully functioning, moderately complex design, with no previous experience working on something like this, probably is not that bad. Are you kidding? That falls into the realm of superhuman. I've seen 20 year veterans blow a 100 grand and get half that far. I…
A high density BGA through an OSH Park board with a homebrew reflow oven and only 3 revs and a stainless stencil on only the last pass? Yeah, that's really quite good.
You practically can't avoid making a mistake on a PCB of that complexity. There are simply too many details buried on too many datasheets and one of them is going to drop.
If you have the time, the best thing I have found for catching mistakes is to have a design review. Even if the person doesn't understand electronics, the fact that you have to walk through every part and explain it to somebody means that you will catch some really stupid things.
However, if you're good and the board isn't too expensive, it's often cheaper just to fab the board. You're time is worth something, and you can be designing something else while the PCB is being fabbed.
Hey! I'm Lukas, the guy who made this. Just discovered someone posted it on Hacker News, pretty exciting for me. If you want to ask me any questions or make comments, I'm here and on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/4uic5r/sdr_pla...
Just a technical writing tip, when you are using any sort of acronym that's the subject of the piece it's helpful to do something like SDR (Software Defined Radio), then use SDR through the rest of the text. Either that or do the blog-style hyperlink the first acronym to the wikipedia page or give a footnote.
Hey! I'm Lukas, the guy who made this. Just discovered someone posted it on Hacker News, pretty exciting for me. If you want to ask me any questions or make comments, I'm here and on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/4uic5r/sdr_pla...
Just a technical writing tip, when you are using any sort of acronym that's the subject of the piece it's helpful to do something like SDR (Software Defined Radio), then use SDR through the rest of the text. Either that or do the blog-style hyperlink the first acronym to the wikipedia page or give a footnote.
Could this project, in theory, be done with a 2-layer (front and back) board? I'm thinking of building a small SoC board... but I don't want to shell out hundreds of bucks (and days of shipping time) for prototype PCBs, but hand-etch them instead.
I don't think you can do high frequency RAM lines with hand etched boards or BGA escape routing without vias, but two layer prototype boards are pretty cheap these days.
I also had done more revisions of the board and spent way more money than I initially planned for... even though in hindsight, having only three revisions for a fully functioning, moderately complex design, with no previous experience working on something like this, probably is not that bad. Are you kidding? That falls into the realm of superhuman. I've seen 20 year veterans blow a 100 grand and get half that far. I…
> Are you kidding? That falls into the realm of superhuman. I've seen 20 year veterans blow a 100 grand and get half that far. I think even Woz would do a double-take. A high density BGA through an OSH Park board with a homebrew reflow oven and only 3 revs and a stainless stencil on only the last pass? Yeah, that's really quite good. You practically can't avoid making a mistake on a PCB of that complexity. There are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are you kidding? That falls into the realm of superhuman. I've seen 20 year veterans blow a 100 grand and get half that far. I think even Woz would do a double-take. A high density BGA through an OSH Park board with a homebrew reflow oven and only 3 revs and a stainless stencil on only the last pass? Yeah, that's really quite good. You practically can't avoid making a mistake on a PCB of that complexity. There are…
That's actually sort of what I did. I didn't explain it to someone else, but went through it in my head, talking to myself explaining the design. Explaining it to someone else must be even better!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
Personally I use a cat. Its Steve-Jobs-like attitude seems ideally suited for the task.