My dear friends,
The time has come for a device that will fill the gap between the PC and
the homebrew QSD/QSE rigs, covering the control and the I/Q data streams
completely thus eliminating the need of a multichannel audio card.
Since I have succesfull tests on a first pilot-run small production, I'm about
to start spreading the good news.
Until now we used the PC audio cards for the purpose of connecting our rig to
the SDR application.
Although it can be used, this PC sound card solution has lots of other problems
and we ended up giving more effort to the sound card setup rather to the SDR
rig.
Lots of issues have been seen so far, specially when someone wants to have Tx
and Rx, and these are because of the audio card 'settings' and the diversity of
the controls and drivers of each audio brand.
So these issues had to be resolved and a proper performing solution with ease on
setup and without hassle having a uniform approach was needed to the home brew
SDR community.
So, here comes the USB2SDR.
USB2SDR is overall a USB to multichannel I2S board combined with DSP, codecs and
control circuitry.
The USB2SDR is a solution that plugs into a USB 2.0 highspeed port and acts
pretty much like the Ozy/Janus combo from HPSDR but it is suited to the home
brew SDR designs with QSD for reception and QSE for transmission.
USB2SDR gives one USB 2.0 port as a unique connection to the PC, a separate RJ45
handheld mic connector with PTT, a separate phones connection, a CW
straight/paddles connection, two high performance ADC ports for rig's Rx I/Q,
two high performance DAC ports for rig's Tx I/Q and external interface with I2C
bus and 8 general purpose I/O lines.
In its basic configuration, USB2SDR has 4 mono inputs and 4 mono outputs (4+4),
with 192KHz sampling rate at 32bits. The ADC is having a dynamic range of 92 db
and the DAC of 100 db.
These numbers are in the range of the Flex1500 whereas the sampling rate is 4
times higher actualy being able to show 4 times larger panadapter view.
As an upgrade, there is an option board, giving additional 2 mono inputs (ADC)
and 2 mono outputs (DAC). It contains the best performer in 24 bit ADC with
123dB dynamic range, the AK5394A (used in F5K and Janus).
Additional upgrades are planned and can be attached via provided connectors,
codecs, LCD, etc.
Users that would like to utilize it as simple USB to I2S will be able to connect
two more codecs in its connectors, also SDR designers could easily include its
DSP functionality to provide complete or even stand-alone rigs.
And of course it is directly and natively integrated in PowerSDR-IQ PC
application giving ease of setup and support.
USB2SDR is a concurrent 4+4 multichannel USB to I2S, that is one of its main
advantages for those who want native and effort-free setup with both Tx and Rx
in PowerSDR-IQ.
It contains
on user side of board
1 Power supply port although it has been verified that the board can be powered
properly from USB port (~150mA)
1 x USB2.0 highspeed port
1 CW Key/Paddles port
1 RJ45 port for standard handheld mic with PTT
1 stereo phones port
1 stereo line-in port
on 'rig' side of board
1 DB15 connector with I2C and 8 GPIO lines
1 stereo line-in port for Rx IQ signals
1 stereo line-out port for Tx IQ signals
on board surface
2 additional I2S connectors
1 additional GPIO connector
1 JTAG connector
board includes
2 codecs 192KHz/32bit Stereo-in ADC 92dB DR, Stereo-out DAC 100dB DR
1 DSP CPU TMS320C5515 that can have hardware operations FFT/IFFT/FIR/IIR for future
development.
The board stream functionality covers 4 input mono channels (2 stereo) and 4
output mono channels (2 stereo) all of them concurrently streaming through the
USB2.0 highspeed port.
This is required for succesfull and easy setup of having both Tx and Rx.
So, if you are interested there is a group buy planned for the ready-made
product.
The price is 180 Euro (235 USD) that will inlcude postage and packing and
participation will be through Paypal.
Group buy has to have at least 200 members if it is to achieve that price.
Everyone that is interested can send me an email to sv1eia at
gmail dot com.
Best regards and wishes my dear friends for a Happy New Year,
Christos SV1EIA
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