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NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

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Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#41

Post by joezydeco »

cedivad wrote: post #10
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The board layout triggers my OCD :) Why the weird angle of those main ICs? Usually it's 45 degrees or parallel to the board.

I routed the i.MX block like a normal human being, then rotated everything 23 degrees to (1) avoid the fiber weave effect and (2) not collide with any of the mounting holes, as that placement needs to be symmetrical under the slots for the two daughterboards. I get that it's triggering people, I get PTSD thinking about needing to touch that routing as well. Altium doesn't support arbitrary-angle differential pairs, s…

I love the curvy traces! It gives me the warm feels about old school handmade rubylith films. Don't change a thing!

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#42

Post by kam »

cedivad wrote: post #2

I designed this system (not the chip, clearly), so feel free to ask any questions!

What's the software story for the VSPA DSP? Is that going to run user code, or a binary blob that does some filtering and sends I/Q samples to the iMX or USB3?

NXP doesn't share many details on the LA9310. Could just be too early, but it smells like a "you must convince a sales rep you're going to be a qualified customer and sign a stack of NDAs before you dare ask for a datasheet or instruction set manual" situation, which is unfortunate.

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#45

Post by cedivad »

MegaDeKay wrote: post #43
cedivad wrote: post #2

I designed this system (not the chip, clearly), so feel free to ask any questions!

Will this be open source hardware / software like the HackRF One?? I see no mention of this so I assume not?

The schematics will be released publicly when the product is shipping, but it won't be OSHW. I don't want to end up like the HackRF, where one small company is burdened with supporting an ecosystem of what is mostly clones. The HackRF designer himself said he wouldn't do it again.

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#46

Post by cedivad »

kam wrote: post #42
cedivad wrote: post #2

I designed this system (not the chip, clearly), so feel free to ask any questions!

What's the software story for the VSPA DSP? Is that going to run user code, or a binary blob that does some filtering and sends I/Q samples to the iMX or USB3? NXP doesn't share many details on the LA9310. Could just be too early, but it smells like a "you must convince a sales rep you're going to be a qualified customer and sign a stack of NDAs before you dare ask for a datasheet or instruction set manual" situation…

NXP are open sourcing a lot of the support stack for the LA9310 to go along with this product release, but I'm afraid they consider the VSPA DSP to be highly proprietary, yes.

Example: https://github.com/nxp-qoriq?q=la93

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#47

Post by cedivad »

eqvinox wrote: post #44
cedivad wrote: post #2

I designed this system (not the chip, clearly), so feel free to ask any questions!

Any chance to get a direct PCIe connection to plug this into an x86 host?

It would need to be a different design entirely.

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#48

Post by zbrozek »

ajb wrote: post #26

As usual, "taking over the scrolling" causes issues - in this case, the page is difficult to access using Firefox for Android. I usually can't get to the information at the bottom of the page (it worked once, don't know how)

I gave up trying to read the page for these reasons.

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#49

Post by cedivad »

zbrozek wrote: post #48
ajb wrote: post #26

As usual, "taking over the scrolling" causes issues - in this case, the page is difficult to access using Firefox for Android. I usually can't get to the information at the bottom of the page (it worked once, don't know how)

I gave up trying to read the page for these reasons.

Is this with an older Firefox version maybe? I've tried with a relatively recent one and couldn't reproduce, but I'll look at the logs and try to fix this now that the HN storm has passed :-)

Re: NXP LA9310: A new platform for SDR and the 10-year-old AD9361 RF Transceiver

#50

Post by themehdi »

cedivad wrote: post #32
themehdi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is amazing! I would buy one in this price range. What sort of help/contributions you need/expect from interested users? E.g. financial funding on CrowdSupply, beta testing, feature wishlist, etc.

We need volumes, so the best I can hope for is people join the waitlist and pre-order when we show a functioning prototype. We already placed sizeable orders with the manufacturers and have the first batch planned for September, but further batches are probably going to be delayed into 2024 (we can't start asking for preorders before the product is tested, which is going to take time, so we can't preorder those chips…

Thanks. I have followed you on Twitter, and will discuss this with my RF fellas and get back to you on Discord or email. However, for now, I could mention 2 things that can be attractive to me as a radio amateur and RF hobbyist: 1. Any daughter board that can provide HF coverage, ideally with a few filters for the ham bands. 2. A proper shielding enclosure (shield from external noise, plus provide some heat dissipation)

and 3rd would be on the software side: support in Soapy and GNURadio (osmosdr) but I guess that would eventually come from the community.

This is exciting, and as supporter of previous open source SDR projects, I'm looking forward to more updates and news from you.

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