AW: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR
At pearl www.pearl.de http://www.pearl.de/ (a hardware dealer) you could get a stereo headphone with head tracking but without the video output . Okay it was 2 years ago when I got it so I don´t know if still available Ur gear virtual reality stereo headphone (as I remember) It tracks the mouse so it can be done with sdr soft . You look on the waterfall left or right of your actual rx qrg . Click and are tuned to the new station I use this headphone sometimes for gaming and also when I work on the pc Very nice if you move your head just a bit and the mouse jumps over to next position (or better say is following your eyes) If you worked with the headphone a few time you will never use your normal mouse again Because of 2 reasons . You have your hands on the keyboard free for typing and your mouse follows your view It is also useful when working with texteditors like word or similar . Just look upper left corner of text, click and hold the button move your eyes to lower right corner and release the button viola the text is marked Now push ctrl + c for copy or ctrl + x for deleting etc . There is a control stick with the headphone .. It is like a mouse but without ball . You hold it in the right for controlling speed in games (with a slider) Another wheel for changing weapons some buttons under your different fingers Didn´t try it for sdr but surely you can assign the needed things to the controllingsoftware Dg9bfc Sigi _ Von: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] Im Auftrag von Rod Lane Gesendet: Donnerstag, 21. Januar 2010 05:21 An: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Betreff: RE: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR Check out the head tracker at http://johnnylee. http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ net/projects/wii/ Cheap hardware that we could all put together, now the software interface to do what youre looking to do is the next part. From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Cortland Richmond Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:21 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR I would suggest an intuitive interface; stereo headphones with tracking so turning one's head tunes the receiver, frequencies below the tuned point sent to the left earphone, frequencies above, to the right. Now just turn your head until something interesting is audible straight ahead, press a switch or click on an icon and Bob's your uncle! (sneaking in English) This could be pretty easy with some of the virtual reality gaming systems but we might not need the video outputs. Or maybe we would Imagine spotting the multiplier you need on the heads up display, turning your head until it's heard straight in front, and ZAPPING it with the mouse. Nerd Preferred! Cortland KA5S Cortland [Original Message] From: Dave Ackrill dave.g0...@tiscali. mailto:dave.g0dja%40tiscali.co.uk co.uk Ah grasshopper, you begin to learn... After 24 hours, almost... I think I will conclude that seeing a whole bunch of spectrum at once is very useful but something you will lose interest in on average ham days, perhaps only when hunting a specific DXpdition will actually WATCHING the PC screen be something you want to do. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.432 / Virus Database: 270.14.141/2622 - Release Date: 01/20/10 09:12:00
[digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR
I have not had an SDR even 24 hours yet, but here are some random initial thoughts. 3 Yrs ago I contemplated a Flex radio and talked to a neighbour who owned one. He loved his, but warned my that they were very much a work in progress and not for someone who wanted a has to do everything box. I decided to put my hard earned cash in to a TS2000 instead. 3 years later, I have an inexpensive SDR receiver . I have concluded that they are still a work in progress, software is still being refined. Many things can't be done easily. However 2010 seems to be the year we can expect MAJOR improvements like Simon's SDR-Radio. While Simon's product is very much a work in progress, it is also a work of art ! Other software appears geeky and will scare people away. Simon's looks like a radio, and will make the rookie more at ease. After 24 hours, almost... I think I will conclude that seeing a whole bunch of spectrum at once is very useful but something you will lose interest in on average ham days, perhaps only when hunting a specific DXpdition will actually WATCHING the PC screen be something you want to do. To really get a lot of joy, you will want software that will do the looking: for you and organize what is heard over several hundred Khz . Luckily this is available via CW Skimmer for the CW fanatic and via Multipsk for the digital enthusiast. I am not sure what you will want for SSB/phone signals.So, in my opinion, if you get a SDR ..figure on also owning CW Skimmer ( $75!) and Multipsk, Dm780 is likely to have significant interfacing with SDRs later in 2010,, Pleasantly, broadcast band Dxing and Utility DXing is a joy with an SDR. I don't think anyone has invented the equivalent of a CW Skimmer or RS ID-type station identification for broadcast bands, but I suspect it could be done if someone thought more about it (a digital ID broadcast by the station that software would pick up and display on a PC screen ? ) Interfacing SDR's with things like clusters and logging software is not as straight forward as it might seem... still refinements needed for this process. Eventually, perhaps now ...already, SDR display screens will be simply bandmaps with station callsigns . The gee-whiz spectrum analyzer type display will be a background item to show off when guests arrive, . Andy K3UK
Re: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR
Andy obrien wrote: I have not had an SDR even 24 hours yet, but here are some random initial thoughts. Hi Andy, Welcome to the wonderful, strange, and slightly surreal of radio reception that is 'SDR' radio. The basics are all the same, as in 'you canna change the laws of physics, Jim' but the old world of limits because of RF filtering or AF filtering are not exactly gone, but may be swerved around. 3 Yrs ago I contemplated a Flex radio and talked to a neighbour who owned one. He loved his, but warned my that they were very much a work in progress and not for someone who wanted a has to do everything box. I decided to put my hard earned cash in to a TS2000 instead. I went that route as well, but rapidly learned that the FlexRadio 'One Hardware' idea became 'Many hardware boxes that we sell to you because the original, and new hardware, and next hardware, we decided to improve upon, is the new hardware. I also went the TS2000(X) route as being a good compromise for what I wanted to do. Ah grasshopper, you begin to learn... After 24 hours, almost... I think I will conclude that seeing a whole bunch of spectrum at once is very useful but something you will lose interest in on average ham days, perhaps only when hunting a specific DXpdition will actually WATCHING the PC screen be something you want to do. What we think we want, and what we really want are often very different things. Forgive me Andy, in your next couple of paragraphs you do cover a lot of ground. But, here goes nothing... After 24 hours, almost... I think I will conclude that seeing a whole bunch of spectrum at once is very useful but something you will lose interest in on average ham days, perhaps only when hunting a specific DXpdition will actually WATCHING the PC screen be something you want to do. Erm, yes, but no, but yes, but... Andy, like the rest of us, you need to define what you are trying to do. See every signal in a section of the band, or only the weakest? Or, just a particular signal that you want in every other signal that is on the air. Given time, and processing, I guess you will be able to tell the program what callsign and on what frequency you want it to tell you about if it hears it. That's not to say that it will be just that easy. You could wait 10 years before that callsign came up on that frequency, and you heard it, but the software would be that patient and would tell you when it heard it. CW Skimmer is great piece of software, but it really works best on HF, in my experience, and if it doesn't work on the bands you like then it is expensive. Broadcast band DXing with any SDR that covers the HF bands, together with DRM software decoding, can be very good. However, you will also start to learn about optimal Signal to Noise plus Noise ratios when the program you are listening to just suddenly drops out of lock. The radio displays derived from the receiver software will, I agree with you, need to adapt to the wishes of the users but the users do need to see 'something' against which to base their wants. This is a bit of a catch 22 I know, but we users do need to start to play with the signals that we receive and tell the programmers how we would like the SDR Data to be presented to us so that we can feed back to them, and vice versa. However, no matter how good this all gets, I'll still use a simple CW transmitter and receiver and I guess that there will always be someone out there to make contact with. Even the programmer who just coded the latest FEC narrow band signal that can produce an almost error free message transfer wont give me quite the thrill of exchanging contact details on the 23 or 3cm band via aircraft or rain scatter modes by ear with a new country or square. That is the bit that the computer, for me, can never replace. Dave G0DJA
Re: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR
I would suggest an intuitive interface; stereo headphones with tracking so turning one's head tunes the receiver, frequencies below the tuned point sent to the left earphone, frequencies above, to the right. Now just turn your head until something interesting is audible straight ahead, press a switch or click on an icon and Bob's your uncle! (sneaking in English) This could be pretty easy with some of the virtual reality gaming systems but we might not need the video outputs. Or maybe we would Imagine spotting the multiplier you need on the heads up display, turning your head until it's heard straight in front, and ZAPPING it with the mouse. Nerd Preferred! Cortland KA5S Cortland [Original Message] From: Dave Ackrill dave.g0...@tiscali.co.uk Ah grasshopper, you begin to learn... After 24 hours, almost... I think I will conclude that seeing a whole bunch of spectrum at once is very useful but something you will lose interest in on average ham days, perhaps only when hunting a specific DXpdition will actually WATCHING the PC screen be something you want to do.
RE: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR
Check out the head tracker at http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ Cheap hardware that we could all put together, now the software interface to do what you're looking to do is the next part. From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Cortland Richmond Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 10:21 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Initial thoughts on SDR I would suggest an intuitive interface; stereo headphones with tracking so turning one's head tunes the receiver, frequencies below the tuned point sent to the left earphone, frequencies above, to the right. Now just turn your head until something interesting is audible straight ahead, press a switch or click on an icon and Bob's your uncle! (sneaking in English) This could be pretty easy with some of the virtual reality gaming systems but we might not need the video outputs. Or maybe we would Imagine spotting the multiplier you need on the heads up display, turning your head until it's heard straight in front, and ZAPPING it with the mouse. Nerd Preferred! Cortland KA5S Cortland [Original Message] From: Dave Ackrill dave.g0...@tiscali.co.uk mailto:dave.g0dja%40tiscali.co.uk Ah grasshopper, you begin to learn... After 24 hours, almost... I think I will conclude that seeing a whole bunch of spectrum at once is very useful but something you will lose interest in on average ham days, perhaps only when hunting a specific DXpdition will actually WATCHING the PC screen be something you want to do. No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.432 / Virus Database: 270.14.141/2622 - Release Date: 01/20/10 09:12:00
