On 10/7/13 7:46 AM, Collins, Graham wrote:
Indeed, the inexpensive DVB-T dongles are showing up in many places including as David noted, decoding GPS. The AMSAT Fun Cube Dongle is a very capable and interesting device. Interestingly it uses the same Elonics E4000 front end chip that many of the inexpensive DVB-T devices do. Apparently Elonics is no longer in business and the inexpensive DVB-T devices using this chip are becoming less common. The DVB-T devises using the R820T chip are becoming the preferable versions when those with the E4000 cannot be found. I wonder if the Fun Cube Dongle will be likewise changed (perhaps it already has).
This illustrates is the fundamental problem with leveraging cheap consumer or government surplus gear. The hacker community moves much slower than the commercial one, so you wind up with projects requiring things that are no longer sold. It's particularly endemic in the amateur radio community where we are always repurposing something that hasn't been made for 30 years. But it makes it hard for the new entrant, who doesn't have a box full of old MASTR-II VHF radios or Bell 202 modems or whatever sitting around.
But the existence of that gear in some folks's garages tends to ossify the development. How many Bell 202 modems are still in use? But VHF packet radio is 202 compatible, because every product made for the last 30 years was compatible with the 202. Not because it's inherently good, but because you want to be compatible with the other people, and there's a sort of rolling compatibility.
(Amateur radio is not the only instance of this. The Scientific Spaceflight community is the same. We love to use spares from previous missions to reduce costs, but that brings along the need to be compatible with the interfaces of those spares. As a result, MIL-STD-1553B Notice 2 or Notice 4 is still used on spacecraft, even if it's not the most appropriate, lowest power, etc.)
For a particularly interesting example, look at the plethora of versions of the WRT-54G WiFi router popular with hackers; there's about 50 versions listed on the DD-WRt website. Some of he versions are amenable to dropping in a new OS and/or software, others are not, and still others are "modifiable" (as in cutting traces, soldering, adding parts and/or connectors) to put in new software.
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