On 09.01.2011 18:31, J.D. Bakker wrote: >> It's not a wrong question to ask for cheaper hardware that everybody can >> afford. > It is if you're not willing to invest the time and money to make it happen. That is the commercial point of view. GNU itself is very non-commercial. It would be logical to combine the GNU Radio software with complete Open Source Hardware.
> As has been discussed several times in the past decade-and-a-half, the > realities of free/open hardware are significantly different than those of > FOSS. Prototyping costs, closed firmware toolchains and the fluidity of parts > sourcing are but a few of the obstacles. While anyone with a computer > (which can be essentially free if you settle for older hardware) can > contribute to the software side, hardware development costs real money, and > those of us who aren't eccentric millionaires need *some* way of recuperating > our costs. There are still radio amateurs, hobbyists and other people who like to share knowledge about creating hardware. See the SSRP (http://oscar.dcarr.org/ssrp/) project. You don't have to be a millionaire to finance your electronics hobby. Wasn't it just $30 for the USRP FPGA, and some other low-cost chips on the mainboard? Why not creating USRP hardware as a community project like GNU? Of course the development and revision cycles are much slower than for software, but people could share EDA files on a GIT server. With open source hardware it would be easier to create variants, e.g. a low-cost version with one RX-only channel, attach some extra functionality,... _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
