Sunday, February 24, 2013

Panadapter/bandscope/spectrum analyzer/decoder idea


OZ9AEC had the nice idea of connecting one of those USB TV dongles to a "Beaglebone" board:




 With that he got an "Spectrum analyzer", for about 140 Eur (more or less depending on supplier), and a computer running Linux.

Now...imagine...connect the same Beagle board (or any other small board running Linux) to a USB sound card, a USB to serial converter and a USB SDR receiver. The SDR input connected to your radio unfiltered IF, the serial interface to the radio control port and the sound card to the radio audio output and you end up with a box similar to this:


..except it will be a little bit cheaper and with more options... the P3 costs about 699.95 USD (530 Eur) and won't give you all mode decoding, only rig control and a bandscope.
But what's the point? A small laptot can do the same, yes it can but you can not do something similar to this with a laptop:




 ....ah... so many ideas, so little money :)


Have a nice week!

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