Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition (take 2)
The SDR Forum intends to seek permission to publish proposals, design documents, engineering drawings, source code, analyses, and supporting material developed under the challenge entires. No materials shall be marked `proprietary'. IMHO tt would be even better if the implied ownership belongs to the creators were described explicitly, but I can abide by it as it stands. Thanks for making the change! - MLD Academics get a tremendous amount of pressure from software vendors, to use their stuff, and not their competition. It doesn't take much to see that the competition is us. Part of this pressure comes from book publishers, by including demo versions of commercial software, refusing to include free/GPL software, pressuring authors to use commercial software, not GPL software, etc. Prepare for the electronics education wiki. It's coming. Some other comments from others I think all of the Can't get gnuradio-core to compile emails on this listserv prove the difficulty in working with this project. Give them a custom Knoppix disk. Recommend a distribution that includes gnuradio, or has a package available. Then you can apt-get install ... or something like that. I can't imagine what would happen if I told them they had to install Linux and the GNU Radio code if they wanted to work on this stuff at home! Give them a custom Knoppix disk. It is OK to say they need to install Windows (at a cost of $???), and spend $100 for an academic copy that will expire when they graduate, or not work on the new computer they get in two years? Quantian Linux is a Knoppix variant that has lots of math and EE software on it. It's big. It mostly fills a DVD. While it is expensive, there is quite an ecosystem that has developed around it, something that Octave/Scilab/numPython/etc. aren't really able to offer. Who owns the ecosystem? A company starts a core, then relies on a user community to add all kinds of stuff, the true value. Eventually, the value of the community exceeds the core. Why not use a core from the community too? when the commercial core is derived from a free/open-source core? There are plenty of contests which are really just ways to promote a commercial product, and to divert energy away from their competition (Free/open-source software). How about a real design project, where you have the students work on something that gnuradio needs and is missing? How about implementing some of the features that octave is missing? These are projects that will look good on a resume, and be useful, even if they don't come in first. I contributed x to the gnuradio project is a lot more impressive than My team entered this contest and didn't win. I believe that if you managed to pull it off once, you would find that there is funding available to do it again. ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
[Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition (take 2)
http://radiochallenge.org/ The new IP policy: The SDR Forum intends to seek permission to publish proposals, design documents, engineering drawings, source code, analyses, and supporting material developed under the challenge entires. No materials shall be marked `proprietary'. IMHO tt would be even better if the implied ownership belongs to the creators were described explicitly, but I can abide by it as it stands. Thanks for making the change! - MLD ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
On Friday 19 May 2006 11:38, Tom Rondeau wrote: Well put, Lamar. I just wanted to add a few things. I've worked with the SDR Forum for a while now, so I decided to ask them about the concerns raised on this discussion board. Thanks, Tom. Say hi to Steve Ellingson for me; got his document, and enjoyed the read. Bottom line, I love the GNU Radio project, but the world of SDR has a long way to go. It started mostly, and still is largely, with military money. We are just now seeing it as a commercial and hobbyist possibility. MatLab plus Simulink is de rigeur for many. I personally have a license for this, on Linux. We have a large hardware computer design coming in for autocorrelating 12 200MS/s streams; it will require the equivalent of an 800GHz P4; it's going to be done with Xilinx silicon, similar to the setup Dr. Ellingson is using with ETA here at PARI. that much of the work comes from the military and the big contractors. Getting more students involved is nothing short of a good thing. If the GNU Radio community wants to get involved, too, I think everyone would be happy. This is about the future of SDR and communications, and I for one would like to see as many students get their hands on this stuff as possible and provide the necessary cooperation and competition to push it to new heights. Yea, and Amen. -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
Tom Rondeau wrote: Well put, Lamar. I just wanted to add a few things. I've worked with the SDR Forum for a while now, so I decided to ask them about the concerns raised on this discussion board. First, to the IP, they are not trying to take IP rights away from the inventors. Their intent is to reserve the right to publish the work. This is basically the same as the copyright transfer we always give when publishing papers for IEEE or to the SDR Forum Technical Conference. They have recognized problems with the wording, as raised by a number of people directly involved with the competition, and are right now waiting for the new wording to clear this up. The SDRF is a non-profit organization and has no interest in holding IP of this sort. I've been to a couple of the SDR Forum conferences, and I've been impressed with the organization. I'm glad they are clearing this IP issue up. I was quite surprised to read the IP rights clause there, based on other publications I've seen from the SDR Forum. The competition is meant to allow students to get hands-on work with SDRs, techniques, and tools. The corporate sponsors have agreed to provide some tools and equipment to facilitate this process. I understand the concerns with the corporate sponsorship, but again, they do not receive the IP created. They are mostly interested in building familiarity with their products, getting their names out to the community for future development, and hopefully build loyalty to their products. I think this competition is a good idea, and I'm very curious to see the projects that get submitted to this. I've been out of school for a while , but the projects that are listed as examples strike me as quite difficult for a group of students, but I certainly willing to be proven wrong. If nothing else, entering this contest would look great on a student's resume, and would really seal the deal when it comes to hiring. I'm not sure that it would really matter how well they placed, as long as there was something there that the students could talk about in an interview. Without these tools made available to the competitors, it wouldn't really fly. Unfortunately, most people do not look at the GNU Radio right now as a professional tool whereas MATLAB is, not to mention the fact that MATLAB is a simple CD installation, and I think all of the Can't get gnuradio-core to compile emails on this listserv prove the difficulty in working with this project. Matlab/Simulink makes for a decent toolset. While it is expensive, there is quite an ecosystem that has developed around it, something that Octave/Scilab/numPython/etc. aren't really able to offer. Looking at the other difficulties in this project, it certainly seems like a decent decision to eliminate as many software glitches as possible. As someone who has taught communications classes (and used the GNU Radio for in-class demonstrations!), I can tell you that most electrical engineers in communications are not comfortable with programming, which I am highly critical of as the future of communications is in software. That aside, many of them are uncomfortable working in MATLAB in a Windows environment. When I tell my students that they will have to program in this class, I loose a number of them, and the rest groan. I can't imagine what would happen if I told them they had to install Linux and the GNU Radio code if they wanted to work on this stuff at home! They are going to have to get used to programming something if they plan on working as an engineer. A significant amount of my work hours are spent staring into 1) The Matlab IDE 2) Agilent's ADS 3) Microsoft Excel and I'd really like the time to learn Verilog. While Computer algebra packages are nice, if you plan on implementing something in hardware, you will need something that outputs something that you can build an IC from. Perhaps a topic for another discussion. Bottom line, I love the GNU Radio project, but the world of SDR has a long way to go. It started mostly, and still is largely, with military money. We are just now seeing it as a commercial and hobbyist possibility. That means that much of the work comes from the military and the big contractors. Getting more students involved is nothing short of a good thing. If the GNU Radio community wants to get involved, too, I think everyone would be happy. This is about the future of SDR and communications, and I for one would like to see as many students get their hands on this stuff as possible and provide the necessary cooperation and competition to push it to new heights. Thanks, and I'll get rid of my soapbox now. Tom Rondeau Virginia Tech -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Lamar Owen Sent: Thursday, May 18, 2006 6:16 PM To: John Gilmore; discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org Subject: RE: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition [You know, I might get flamed for this, but here goes
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
Friends - On Fri, May 19, 2006 at 11:14:43PM -0400, David Bengtson wrote: A significant amount of my work hours are spent staring into 1) The Matlab IDE 2) Agilent's ADS 3) Microsoft Excel and I'd really like the time to learn Verilog. While Computer algebra packages are nice, if you plan on implementing something in hardware, you will need something that outputs something that you can build an IC from. Perhaps a topic for another discussion. I have designed, simulated, and implemented a mixed analog/digital/software system using (Icarus) Verilog and C. Attempts by others to accomplish this using Matlab, Simulink, and all manner of expensive plug-ins never amounted to much. Oh, and the initial feasibility check was done with Octave. They are going to have to get used to programming something if they plan on working as an engineer. I fully agree. And I personally have made the choice to program using tools that I have control over. - Larry ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
There are monetary prizes... Yeah -- unspecified ones! It looks like an incredible amount of work, under really picky and idiotic rules, solving problems so challenging that there *isn't* any commercial gear that does it, at any price. For an unknown and probably tiny reward. And to hand it all over to somebody else to own!!! (They won't accept work that has been released under a public license, such as the GPL or even the BSD license. If you spend two years writing this stuff, they will *own* it at the end, and you won't even be able to keep working with or evolving your own software or hardware. And you won't be paid for any of this.) They've issued a call for suckers. Any takers? [Now let's go back to improving the world with GNU Radio...] John ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
On Thursday 18 May 2006 16:52, John Gilmore wrote: (They won't accept work that has been released under a public license, such as the GPL or even the BSD license. If you spend two years writing this stuff, they will *own* it at the end, and you won't even be able to keep working with or evolving your own software or hardware. And you won't be paid for any of this.) They've issued a call for suckers. Any takers? College professors (and students taking their advice) fall for that all the time. It is so bad in some schools that those (either students or professors) who do not fall for it are treated as outcasts. ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
RE: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
[You know, I might get flamed for this, but here goes] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of John Gilmore It looks like an incredible amount of work, under really picky and idiotic rules, solving problems so challenging that there *isn't* any commercial gear that does it, at any price. For an unknown and probably tiny reward. And to hand it all over to somebody else to own!!! Looking over the rules, FAQ, and phases, this looks pretty normal, having dealt with engineering academia before (for PARI, and during my own senior year 17 years ago). The purpose of these challenges is education of the students in practices found in the industry. Whether those practices are correct or not is not even relevant, as industry practices are what they are. The student is getting the use of the development tools of the sponsors for free during the scope of the challenge; it is an extremely good educational opportunity from the educational point of view, and provides valuable people networking for the students involved. This sort of challenge mirrors the processes by which industrial electrical engineering is actually done, not how we (myself included) wishes it were done. The rules and projects are ordinary in terms of actually engineering industry practice, in my experience. Reading through the sample challenges, and understanding that Matlab, Simulink, and all of Xilinx's tools will be made available, I don't see any of the challenges that would be too difficult for a team of bright engineering juniors and seniors. To give you an example, here at PARI we just finished a two semester mechanical engineering project with NC AT University. In one year, the students developed programs, techniques, skills, and processes to measure, model, and change the balance of our 26 meter radio telescopes, each of which weight over 300 tons. The one is bottom heavy, and the other top heavy. For obvious reasons they began with the bottom heavy dish, and measured torques, calculated moments, centers of mass, and weights, and then recommended not only how much weight to remove, but the ideal (using finite element analysis) weights to remove. The upper axis had 2,200 pounds of lead counterweight removed, and the lower axis around 6,000 pounds. Oh, and the students had to design the fixtures to remove the weights, and actually help remove weights. There were five students, and they completed all of the modelling and 50% of the physical work (they hadn't counted on rust, for instance, on the three inch bolts (not length; diameter!) holding the weights to the structure). But the bottom heavy dish is now much less bottom heavy (we wanted to keep it stable, and not try to perfectly balance it; but they could have made the balance perfect). A team of five students can accomplish amazing things. (They won't accept work that has been released under a public license, such as the GPL or even the BSD license. If you spend two years writing this stuff, they will *own* it at the end, and you won't even be able to keep working with or evolving your own software or hardware. And you won't be paid for any of this.) And just what is wrong with any of this? The sponsors provide tools; the students use them for no charge, and get recognition, valuable experience, and a great time. That is, unless you want a blob of Matlab/Simulink/Xilinx-centric code running around that requires those tools. The scoring is weighted towards those solutions that use the sponsors' products (this is normal industry practice, too; put up the money, and you make the rules). You know, if the GNUradio Project wanted to sponsor such a contest and provide USRP's for each team, then the GNUradio project can set the rules of license. I would love seeing that, actually. By the way, I personally own two USRP's; our technical director owns one; and PARI owns four. So I certainly believe in what the GNUradio project is about; but seeing an antagonistic attitutde towards a normal educational senior project baffles me. If we are going to change engineering practice, we have to get students using the tools. To get them using the tools incentives have to be provided. Although, there are quite a few students using the GNUradio toolkit already. Not directed at John, but to Al: none of these students or their faculty deserve the epithet 'suckers.' -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 www.pari.edu ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
David Bengtson wrote: I also think, looking at the sample problems, that they will be lucky to get any entrants at all. http://www.radiochallenge.org/SampleProblems.html That sample problem list looks more like a brochure - perhaps one of the sponsors. -rick ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] SDR Design Competition
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 04:33:05PM -0700, Matt Ettus wrote: SDR Forum is running a competition for university teams in software radio. There are monetary prizes, and it looks like you get Matlab and Simulink for free. In other words, they think software radio is great, as long as you are beholden to a Big Company with Profits to Protect. - Larry I was just looking at this, intending on posting this. I guess great minds think alike... Matlab and Simulink are very useful tools. While you are encouraged to use the tools that are provided, they didn't seem to be mandatory. I have a bigger concern that the contest entry materials become the property of the SDR Forum. If I were a student looking for something to commercialize, that might be a deal breaker right there. I also think, looking at the sample problems, that they will be lucky to get any entrants at all. http://www.radiochallenge.org/SampleProblems.html especially considering the timeframe they are looking for. ___ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
