Tony (and others):
I have had the SDR-IQ (500-Hz to 30-MHz) for 6-months. I continue to discover new aspects of this technology. Because it uses USB-2.0 I/F to the computer bandwidth is not limited by the soundcard A/D limitations. The SDR-IQ receives 190-KHz of spectrum in real-time; this means that a spectral display is this wide.
I have it coupled to a DEMI 144/28 converter for use on 2m eme and this permits me to view the complete eme sub-band of most VHF/UHF bands. As faster A/D's become available SDR bandpass will widen and upper frequency (sampling rate) rise . See my webpage: http://www.kl7uw.com/SDR.htm and paper for CSVHF-2007 (it will be available on my webpage after the conference)
One area of weakness in the SDR world has been lack of operating software. If you are a programmer then the open-architecture allows anything you can dream up. The rest of us have to wait until new software appears. Currently, I am using Spectravue and Winrad which support the SDR-IQ and SDR-14.
Quickly projects like uWSDR will eclipse current SDR's, but for now I am finding the SDR-IQ very usable and affordable (and I get my feet wet on SDR's).
Since 144-MHz has become my standard IF for microwave's it will find good use in my portable mw station (the SDR-IQ is a single pcb 3.75-inches square and powered via the USB port of the laptop). Similarly for my satellite station.
Latest application is joining in the Experimental 500-KHz Group in the USA. With the SDR-IQ I can capture the whole sub-band at once.
At 12:17 PM 6/14/2007, Tony Langdon wrote:
At 08:59 PM 6/14/2007, Grant Hodgson wrote:
The uWSDR (Microwave SDR) will not need a transverter, it will provide a transceiever operating at the frequency of interest (144, 422, 1268, 2400 etc). It will cover the whole of each band - i.e. 1240-1300MHz. Full duplex cross-band products such as L/S are planned specifically for satellite use. The hardware is still in development, but progress is being made, and software can be downloaded now and used either in simulator mode or with a Softrock. The hardware should be available long in advance of the next HEO launch.
Neat. Hopefully I can look at getting the uWSDR going once I get my HPSDR up and running. Just a comment. Firstly, I notice there are plans for Rx only on 2400 MHz. I should point out that the VK terrestrial weak signal segment is 2403 MHz, so if I was to obtain a 13cm module, I would want Tx and RX on the 2400-2404 MHz segment (Rx for 2401, Tx/Rx for 2403).
I'm also interested how the Ethernet and UDP/IP interface and communications goes. All other SDRs I've seen use a soundcard(ish), USB2 or Firewire interface.
Detailed system simulations show that the RF performance will be as good as, and hopefully significantly better than, a transverter/IF combination.
More details on the uWSDR website - fell free to join the project if you so desire, any extra help would be appreciated.
Looks interesting. I can see my future is SDR for the shack. :) One aspect of ham SDR development so far which I really like is that the various SDRs being designed are using both open hardware and open source software, so there's scope for integrating them all together and mixing and matching the software packages as the end user sees fit. Or one might want to indulge in a little hacking and improve (hopefully! ;) ) the state of the art.
73 de VK3JED http://vkradio.com
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73, Ed - KL7UW ====================================== BP40IQ 50-MHz - 10-GHz www.kl7uw.com 144-EME: FT-847, mgf-1801, 4x-xpol-20, 185w DUBUS Magazine USA Rep dubususa@hotmail.com ======================================