[Discuss-gnuradio] GNU Radio / USRP Alternatives since the Ettus Products aren't trully open source

[Dennis Leary]

Ian,

While I am unaware of how qualitative the Lime Micro Systems Chips are,

what worry's me about these GNU Radio / USRP Alternatives:

>  - Fairwaves UmTRX 
>  - Lime Micro MyriadRF
>  - Loctronix A-2300

Is that all the above listed SDR devices utilizes a 1 product company, and the last one we had was Elonics who produced the famous RTLSDR stick.

But Elonics is bankrupt, so whoever is purchasing / designing around those chipsets, I'd be nervous.

Also, for the price of just 1 Lime MicroSystems chip, $110 as of this date, is still $30 more than purchasing 2 Analog Device chipsets who offers you MORE Radio Frequencies.

The BladRF & ALL of EpiqSolutions products suffers from this as well as they utilize the Lime Microsystems Chipset.

I avoid purchasing Ettus Research Products since he he got the Open Source Community to design applications around his USRP that he claimed to " Release the PCB board layout files " but never did.

Its documented here:

I also got the schematics for my TV set and my video recorder.
But that's for service and repair. It's not free hardware.
As far as I know the USRP designs are copyrighted and not under a free
hardware license. Correct?

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2011-01/msg00533.html

Other than that, the UmTRX is what I'd purchase as your purchasing the support/brillance of the Russians behind it.