Yes and Yes, the data is “processed as received” with a little latency.   Yes,  
the software/firmware is open source.  Visit https://freedv.org/

 

Mel

K0PFX

 

From: Ammar Ahmad Khan <ammar0...@gmail.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2019 5:53 AM
To: freetel-codec2@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Freetel-codec2] A Question about CODEC2 and FDMDV

 

And if we purchase an SM1000 FreeDV Adaptor, can we modify it's software ?

 

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 3:47 PM Ammar Ahmad Khan <ammar0...@gmail.com 
<mailto:ammar0...@gmail.com> > wrote:

And Can anyone who has used FreeDV tell me that Is FreeDV a realtime 
application? Like you continously can send voice from one end and will be 
received in real time at the receiver ?

 

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 3:36 PM Ammar Ahmad Khan <ammar0...@gmail.com 
<mailto:ammar0...@gmail.com> > wrote:

Nice to hear from you Stuart, you explained well. I also saw Rasberry Pie, it 
doesn't have much audio ports , as you need more aux ports for this system. 
Secondly, I don't require any USB, Ethernet, graphic displays or removable 
storage. Only Debugging port and audio ports needed. 

 

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 3:25 PM Stuart Longland <stua...@longlandclan.id.au 
<mailto:stua...@longlandclan.id.au> > wrote:

On 30/7/19 6:19 pm, Al Beard wrote:
> Is there some reason why you want to run on less powerful hardware than
> a Raspberry Pi or
> clone?

- Power consumption: a DSP or MCU will draw much less power than any
Raspberry Pi

- Cost: Raspberry Pi is ~AU$60… STM32F407VG as used in the SM1000 is
$20, there are other options from NXP/Freescale, TI, etc that are even
cheaper.

- Availability: Broadcom won't sell you the bare SoC in the Raspberry Pi
unless you're buying tens of thousands of units.  Closest you get is a
SoM like the Raspberry Pi Compute module.  There are lots of MCUs on the
market, and most can be easily obtained in single units.

- Complexity: MCU just runs bare-metal code from flash, Raspberry Pi has
a boot-loader, a kernel (usually Linux), an operating system (usually a
Debian derivative) *then* the application running on top.  Much more to
go wrong.

- Audio capability: the Raspberry Pi has no audio inputs, just one lone
stereo audio output.  As that audio output shares its power source with
all other 3v3 peripherals, it has _lots_ of noise.  (Found this out the
hard way on Friday evening.)  More recent models have improved on this
somewhat, but your mileage may vary.

> BUT: No USB ports, no Graphic display, no ethernet port. No easily 
> replaceable program SD card.
> No SIMD instructions for any future modes such as LPCnet. 

Suppose the application Ammar has in mind does not require USB,
Ethernet, graphic displays or removable storage?  Maybe such things are
undesirable.

As for SIMD, you do realise that SIMD instructions were developed *for*
digital signal processing applications don't you?  Maybe the TMS320C6713
has different SIMD functions to what's used in LPCNet, but that doesn't
mean it can't be ported by someone who has a good foundation in the field.

It really depends on what you're trying to achieve.  If you want a
general-purpose, highly flexible system, the single board computers may
be a viable option.

Brisbane WICEN recently did a RFID/APRS integration project, and I made
the decision to use the PocketBeagle over a smaller device like the
Arduino Mega on the grounds that the only thing the Arduino Mega had in
its favour was a couple of extra UARTs and a reduced power consumption.

Given the radios and RFID readers we were going to be running *with* the
computers consumed orders of magnitude more power than the computers
themselves, I didn't see this as being that big issue.

Long term, we may decide to port it over to a small MCU platform.  We'll
see.  The PocketBeagles are a bit under AU$40, and while the original
task could most definitely be done by an Arduino, it's looking like
we'll have to run a small database at the check-point, at which point
the PocketBeagle really starts to shine.

We of course have the risk that sudden power down can corrupt an SD
card, however it's not a big problem in our situation to have a couple
of spare SD cards that can be quickly taken to a check-point.  Plus,
there's always the pen-and-paper system as a back-up.

If your aim though was to use a low-power radio like a Elecraft KX3 or
something and wanted a small embedded "modem" to do FreeDV however, the
SM1000 or something built on the TI DSP mentioned would definitely be a
more reliable option long-term, would have a lower hardware cost per
unit, and would consume less power.

The trade-off is development cost.

For us we needed to throw something together in a few week-ends.
Muggins wound up writing the foundations for an AX.25 stack in Python
(there are a few libraries, but they didn't want to play the game for
me), and I basically had a rudimentary system that could send APRS
messages via a standard KISS TNC.

I could of course do what I've done so far in C on a microcontroller,
however it's looking like I'll need to access USB mass storage and embed
a database of some kind (right now I'm using SQLite3, but there are many
other options), things I don't fancy doing from a small microcontroller.

So there's nothing wrong with Ammar going to a development board.  If
the aim is to play with FreeDV it definitely is jumping in at the deep
end, however some people enjoy that sort of challenge.

My thought would be to maybe have a look at the STM32F4 Discovery
development board, as that was the board used to actually develop the
SM1000 firmware.  Once you poke it and see how it moves, it may be
possible to slowly port it over to the TMS320C6713.
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.


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