USRP & the GNU Radio Project is the topic of a talk scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the ARRL/TAPR Digital Communications Conference (http://www.tapr.org/dcc) in Santa Ana. The guy who is giving it, Matt Ettus, has some boards he has been showing in the demonstration area. The mother board is $550 ($500 at the show if you are a TAPR member: $525 if you are not; membership costs $20). Among other things he has daughter receiver boards that cover 50 to 870 MHz ($100) and 800 MHz to 2.4 GHz ($150). The mother board connects to your computer via USB 2.0. Demodulation is done in software that runs under Linux (ports to other operating systems should be available eventually. Demodulators currently available include SSB, FM and HDTV. Check out his web site for more information, http://www.ettus.com .
Also scheduled to speak is Gerald Youngblood who has been selling a software defined transceiver for amateur radio for a couple of years or so. It receives from 12 kHz to 65 MHz and transmits on the 160 thourgh 6 m amateur bands. It interfaces to the radio via a parallel printer port. Most laptops don't have a sound card that will work, so you'd probably have to use an external card such as the Soundblaster Extigy (the Audigy is not recommended). For desktop computers, he recommends the M-Audio Delta 44. More info is at http://www.flex-radio.com .
Stan Slonkosky
