> I think the way the SDR concept was designed was by > thinking outside of the box - but - I think the > designers jumped into another box.
I think the problem is when they jumped from a hard-wired modulation/signal processing/tuning idea to a software-defined modulation/signal processing/tuning concept they opted to use the one computing platform that everyone has at their disposal: the pc (to be distinguished from "PC" which might imply Windows). Since the pc has powerful UI and other interfaces readily available, it was convenient to implement the UI there, too. It's as if they just "gave up" on the UI and accepted the suboptimum UI resources of the signal processing computer on their desktop. > Of course the SDR type of radios is still in the > beginning stages as a perceived radio. What would > happen if the technology from the SDR radio is > packaged in a box with knobs and switches along > with a niffty display. Well, you'd have something like a K3. The K3 may not be completely open to customer-modification, but much of the capabilities of the radio are determined by its software. The problem is that developing software for an SDR that comes in a box with controls on the front panel would require specialized hardware and software to interface with the box. But in the end I think you'd have a better user experience... Imagine, for example, a reconfigurable front panel either with excess knobs and switches that could be incorporated into the software, or one with modular knobs and switches that could be plugged together like Lego blocks to create a custom panel. Maybe this stuff already exists. I don't pay attention to that market because it asks me to do work I'd prefer to pay others to do. Craig NZ0R _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
