I collected some questions from the community, which Jean-Michel Bouffard, a Research Engineer at the Communications Research Centre in Canada, graciously agreed to answer. I hope to see his work inspire similar projects:
(Note: The attachment (*) Jean-Michel mentions below will be placed on downloads or some such place shortly) ================================== It will be a pleasure answering some of your questions. > > In particular, people are interested in whether the plastic or the > hardware will be available to the public, even in small, experimental > quantities, and beyond, whether you know of any commercial modules that > might be substituted for your custom modules. The plastic part was designed from the case CAD files that were released on the openmoko.com website. I attached (*) a model that can be seen using the free edrawings viewer (http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/). We will most probably release the source ProE model of the backplate extension as soon as the author agrees. From the source ProE model, we have ordered a small quantity of 3D printouts in ABS from a local company (http://cimetrixsolutions.com/). Other provider of such custom ABS parts could also be http://www.protomold.com or https://www.redeyerpm.com For the hardware module, it was provided by a manufacturer but we are in a discussion process with them so nothing will be released for now. To sum it all up we are not planning to release any hardware ourselves but after we release the extension ProE files, people will be able to order plastic parts themselves. And hopefully our discussion with receiver manufacturer(s) should result in a receiver commercially available with the driver included in openmokast. So I suggest that you register to our RSS feed (http://openmokast.org/index.php?option=com_rd_rss&id=2) to stay current with the news. > > We are also interested in details such as how the hardware was > connected. We note with pleasure that the software is open-sourced, and > wonder how independent the hardware layer is, so that it might be > replaced with drivers for e.g. an off-the-shelf receiver of some sort. The hardware uses a USB interface so it was connected to the USB port of the FreeRunner from inside the case. When setting USB in "host mode" and the "host mode" in type "1", the FreeRunner is able to power the broadcasting receiver from its battery. > > I personally am fascinated by your previous work with Gumstix and SDR, > as I am an amateur radio operator (KA6RCQ). It has been an interest of > mine to fashion some sort of ham SDR on external hardware, and then to > use the FreeRunner as the GUI and the audio IO device. Is any of your > work on this available to the public? This work on SDR was conducted by a completely different team from the CRC so I cannot say if they have ever released some of their work to the public. > > Regards, > Michael Thanks for your interest... -- Jean-Michel Bouffard Research Engineer | Ingénieur de recherche Communications Research | Centre de recherches sur les Centre Canada | communications Canada Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Cour.: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web site: www.crc.ca | Site web: www.crc.ca _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
