Wow... ignore this list for a month, and some interesting discussions bloom!


This might focus the discussion a bit more. At the MicroHAMS Digital
Conference last weekend in Redmond, WA, Bryan Hoyer of NWDR (UDRX)
confessed ruefully that technology had passed THEM by. The UDRX has
two halves - an ARM-based computer board, and the RF board. The
amazing thing is that the off-the-shelf-for-$35 (really... just gotta
look hard) Raspberry Pi 2, with its quad core processor and 1 GB RAM,
was now cheaper AND more capable than the computer board in the UDRX.
So, since the UDRX still hasn't shipped :-(... NWDR is going to spin
the design one more time and :-( and make the Raspberry Pi 2 the
computer board. When I asked if I had it right... that the RF board
was just going to glom on top of the Raspberry Pi 2, Bryan stated
"There will be NO glomming" :-) Which I took to mean that they're
going to do a careful design. But... now they're going to have to redo
their hardware... AND software... again... perhaps to be compatible
with more standard Linux distros common on the Raspberry Pi. But,
we're going to get a more capable... and fun... UDRX. Eventually :-(


What does the UDRX change?


For starters, watch this video - https://youtu.be/SmyVEwjhG_k... or at
least the last ten minutes of it. David Rowe discusses the concept of
a TDMA repeater. Think digipeater (as in single frequency) only the
T/R switching is done at 5 mS intervals. Yep - a REAL TIME (close
enough for humans) single frequency repeater. He's going to do it with
a minimal SDR and good software, but there's nothing in David's
concept that the UDRX can't already do.


Remember all the hype about 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi hobbyist mesh networks -
every experimenter was a node in the mesh? And more recently the ham
mesh based on the little blue routers? Good idea, but lousy
technology. Hams had pretty good "mesh networking" 20 years earlier -
remember Net/ROM? Good range - the network covered entire regions (and
small countries in Europe), but it was low capacity (1200 baud, Z80's,
1 MHz, 32 MB RAM - nuff said). So fast forward 20... 30 years... and
now we have the technology to marry the longer-range radios with
decent compute power and better RF technology. Let 100,000 real-time
digipeaters bloom at every ham's house... and apartment balcony.
MANUAL spectrum coordination to minimize interference... that's
laughable now. Let the MACHINES do it. We have ample spectrum when we
don't have to worry about fossilized spectrum coordinations for
reserved spectrum for ghost repeaters and affording duplexers that
mandate fixed frequencies.


We're going to have SO much fun playing with new RF technology - in
3-5 years, we're going to just blow past what's possible on commercial
/ public safety two-way networks. One guy, or a small team, with a
great idea posts his alpha software and one weekend later hundreds of
people are testing it for him. A few have 64 GB USB flash drives
plugged into their UDRX for diagnostic logging that can be uploaded to
the dev team to figure out where the holes in THAT project are. Don't
like THAT project - there's dozens of others begging for participants.


The potential is VAST, folks.


We WILL get makers, hackers, etc. flooding in just to play with this
stuff. There's going to be tech tests at Maker Spaces and Maker Fairs.
There will be endless variants of SDRs for VHF/UHF as soon as it's
abundantly clear to vendors (think Chinese radios, folks) that yes,
there are legacy users of the Amateur Radio bands, but the old fart
incumbents react in tens of minutes when the machines can adapt to
changing conditions in milliseconds. So the old farts and their legacy
modes will be properly classified as interference to the interesting
things, and routed around.


I've seen enough to believe that NWDR can make UDRX real, but they
just haven't had the courage to pull the trigger on releasing anything
less than a perfect design upon us, the great unwashed. I have some
sympathy for that - my day job is frustrating, maddening, tiring tech
support for a technical product. But at some point, to unleash the
potential, we gotta have hardware in our hands to play, and for the
code jockeys to hack on.


Good news is that this is no longer a one-horse race, with us
depending on NWDR, or nothing. There's other projects out there, and
eventually one will pop loose with a good-enough SDR for VHF/UHF, and
we're off. I vividly remember the Xerox 820 board? What a POS that
thing was... but it was enough of a platform to start a revolution in
hundreds... thousands (?) of BBS'. All we need is a good-enough SDR
for VHF/UHF and we'll really start having some fun.


Steve N8GNJ








On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 7:52 AM, 'Tyrell Jentink, KD7KUJ'
tyrell@... [UniversalDigitalRadio]
<UniversalDigitalRadio@...> wrote:

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Trying to set up my new thumb dv but it is not being recognized. i believe I have the driver and software installed but nothing is happening.
any ideas?

Dave W9DEC

Does anybody know or have tested which one of these uses less overhead on the Rpi or is there much difference between the overhead of serial over usb vs straight serial.??
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OpenSuse Desktop (13.1)

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Try disabling and re-enabling in Device Manager.  Not a permanent solution, but easier than rebooting.

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