Developers Disclose Schematics For 50-1000 MHz Software-Defined Transceiver

Bruce Perens writes Chris Testa KD2BMH and I have been working for years on a software-defined transceiver that would be FCC-legal and could communicate using essentially any mode and protocol up to 1 MHz wide on frequencies between 50 and 1000 MHz. It's been discussed here before, most recently when Chris taught gate-array programming in Python. We are about to submit the third generation of the design for PCB fabrication, and hope that this version will be salable as a "developer board" and later as a packaged walkie-talkie, mobile, and base station. This radio is unique in that it uses your smartphone for the GUI, uses apps to provide communication modes, contains an on-board FLASH-based gate-array and a ucLinux system. We intend to go for FSF "Respects Your Freedom" certification for the device. My slide show contains 20 pages of schematics and is full of ham jargon ("HT" means "handi-talkie", an old Motorola product name and the hams word for "walkie talkie") but many non-hams should be able to parse it with some help from search engines. Bruce Perens K6BP

Comments

Re:Bruce, finally something worth while

[Bruce Perens]

My pleasure. We have a lot of fun with this stuff, and I'll continue to try to stretch the envelope for as long as I can. Chris and I have talked about doing an open-bitstream gate-array after this project.

Re:Many are leaving ham radio too

[Bruce Perens]

Actually, I led the fight to continue to disallow encryption on the Amateur bands just last year. I evangelized a lot of people to comment in opposition, and even dragged a reluctant ARRL into commenting when their original intent was not to do so. You'll notice that I am cited in the FCC ruling. It was only proposed to allow it for emergency communications, anyway.

You already have many different radio services where encryption is allowed. The shared, self-regulating nature of Amateur Radio makes encryption a disaster, as does the international nature. You can't self-regulate when you can't understand their communications. Nobody wants to see dxpeditions and HF communicators in general treated as spies by various nations, more than they already are.

We're perfectly happy with how useful Amateur Radio is, and it is not denial. Use the Internet and other services when you need encryption.