ecellison wrote:
Bob
Well, I must admit that I had not considered the USRP although I have looked
at it over the past year or two, as well as listened to conversations about
it on Teamspeak.
I did also see Bill's response and your responses.
Aside from price there are a couple of other things favoring the Xylo for
fun and development:
1. Very small size and powered from the USB port on the computer. Allowing a
carry anywhere, plug and go, programming tool.
2. On board interfaces and drivers/code for VGA, JTAG, USB, I2C, LCD
interface, mounts for second oscillator daughter board (an offered option),
Plethora of I/O, power, etc on headers for testing external stuff.
3. For the price, if you were developing code for say the FPGA on the USRP,
it could be easily tried on this board, on a business trip, (or at
Thanksgiving dinner with the family (I'm still in trouble(smile))) then
included in the USRP project. Although I only have a couple of days working
and studying the software and Verilog etc. It appears that Verilog and and
the tools offered by Altera they are very flexible towards porting code to
other FPGA devices. For $120 (forget the other connectors) the developers of
the USRP might just use this to develop code. I think that is what Phil
Covington is using it for.
4. I guess for us non-programmers, non-experts, this is a modest priced,
just for fun learning project, which might yield something as serious as the
USRP in the end. It allows hobbyists to get involved at the cost of a
blinkey. Also it could be mounted as a controller board in a final product,
with a buss to carry the I/O and control.
Eric2
Good answers. I understand all of these considerations. The USRP has
the USB interface period and some IO pins and it requires an external
power supply.
Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert McGwier
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 7:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; FlexRadio; Software Radio
Subject: [Flexradio] Useful FPGA development board
I am having a hugely hard time figuring out what the Xylo board will do
for me that the GnuRadio USRP does not already do and the USRP with
GnuRadio has a bloody HUGE software base with it already (all open
source). In addition, the GnuRadio USRP has all sorts of hardware plug
on modules to turn it into all sorts of things. Could some please inform
me? The difference in price is about $300 but adding all things up side
by side, I just don't see it. Fix my ignorance please.
http://ettus.com
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
Bob
--
Laziness is the number one inspiration for ingenuity. Guilty as charged!
