[NLRS] FunCube

[Duane - N9DG]

The HPSDR (Hermes) project spawned a couple commercial products from a firm called Apache Labs, ANAN-10, ANAN-100, and ANAN-100D. They are targeted more for the HF operator at the 10 or 100W power level. TAPR's involvement with the HPSDR radios has been somewhat more ancillary, mostly providing funding for some "production runs" of the various boards that the HPSDR group comes up with. The HPSDR group has a web-page here:

http://openhpsdr.org/

The most directly applicable, and readily deployable HPSDR "product" to our VHF+ weaksignal world is the Hermes low power transceiver board (same board that is at the heart of the ANAN-10 and ANAN-100), it is a piece of cake to interface to a transverter, and has the dynamic range performance that you really need:

http://openhpsdr.org/hermes.php
http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=HERMES

I use the Hermes as the IF for both my 6 and 2M station. The performance of them has been excellent, and the point click mouse driven operation is totally intuitive and has opened up a whole new level band activity awareness that is unequaled by just about any other means. They do come at a price, but I strongly feel for the performance and capability that they provide, they are in reality a bargain.

One thing I haven't seen anywhere is the dynamic range performance of the DVB-T style dongles. Do they have the sensitivity to see/hear signals right at the noise floor, and be able to do so with other big signal on the band nearby like the Hermes can, or do they fall short on one or both ends? But for the 20 or so bucks they surely are a bargain to play with to get your feet wet with SDR. But be careful to not get incorrect impressions of what SDR technology is actually capable of providing by using these 8 bit device's with their potential performance limitations.

Duane
N9DG

--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 12/29/13, Doug Reed <n0nas at amsat.org> wrote:
 
<snip>
 
 But until you know what you want to do, the DVB-T dongle is
 probably
 the cheapest way to find out a bit of what you can do with
 SDR. If you
 have lots of money to spend, then the USRP gives you lots of
 options.
 But keep in mind that the USRP is over 5 years old and there
 are
 probably other options available now. Even TAPR has a SDR
 project, the
 open-source HPSDR project. <http://www.tapr.org/hpsdr_index.html>
 
 73, Doug Reed, N0NAS.