Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] re: Low cost hardware option, the "total GNUsolution"

[Jason Uher]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 8:19 AM, Patrik Tast <address@hidden> wrote:

> A comment from Jerry Martes,
> "HAM amateurs spend lots more $$ than the cost of a USRP just to get things
> a monkey could build.   From what I have observed, there are thousands more
> amateurs who buy components that those who are willing to build them.
> Money seems to be unimportant in the equation amateurs use to finance their
> hobbies."
>
> We can get an USRPx < $1.5k with daugther boards that works as is

The problem with this generalization is that just as many HAMs spend
very little $$ and just put the dang things together themselves
(usually better than a monkey, but I'm not making any promises).  I'm
sure that while there is a huge potential market for the USRP, and
other expensive SDR equipment, in the HAM user base, there are still a
good number of people willing to put together something themselves,
even if it means breaking out the soldering iron.

The people that are willing to purchase a USRP and all of it's SDR
glory and not the same people that want to put together something
super cheap that just works for a particular hobby/project.  For
example, I have never gone outside of the 2.399-2.410GHz range; and
probably could have gotten away with a simple 2.4GHz board rather than
a full blown USRP, but it's what was available and we had the budget
so we just bought it.  If I had not had any funding for this project,
a low cost option at a fixed frequency would have been very necessary.
 Looking to the future, where I'll want to branch out into other SDR
projects on my own time, I would be more than willing to assemble
something myself in a 900MHz range to keep costs low.  Shelling out
even $800 per node in a production mesh network would be ludicrous,
having an open and simple design that I can modify and incorporate
into other GNU/GPL projects (like a mesh node) would be ideal.

Jason