Hi,
i would like to know news about the new Saturn SDR project.
In particular regarding hardware.
73
Luca IK2LRN
SATURN SDR
Re: SATURN SDR
There is no evidence this is going to be an Apache product at this time. Therefore this topic will be moved out of the "Apache-specific" sub-forum to a more appropriate place.
This project is Yet Another Orion Board with a highly integrated, onboard Raspberry Pi 4 compute module. It is well described in the following two videos.
If you skip to 20:15 in the most recent video you will get a very quick answer. My take-aways follow.
On the upside:
- They changed to a Xilinx FPGA. This may or may not be advantageous from a supply chain/development tools perspective.
- They used a bunch of Xilinx IP in the FPGA. That may or may not be suitable for open source but it certainly makes the firmware design likely to be more modern and reliable.
- Rather than invoke a MAC-PHY interface in the FPGA, they send the data via PCI bus to a Raspberry 4 Compute Module. Having this sort of embedded general purpose processing (GPP) on the provides all sorts of interesting opportunities for a true, thin-client/server architecture. This is something that is desperately needed if openHPSDR is going to move forward into the future.
- The Pi has a fully functional, properly performing GigE interface, something that no prior or current openHPSDR design (Hermes to Orion MKIII) has achieved.
On the downside:
- The current implementation essentially wimps out on the software side, using the Pi either as passthrough to Thetis or as an embedded PiHPSDR processor, rather than as an embedded server to a thin client.
The most recent video:
An older video:
This project is Yet Another Orion Board with a highly integrated, onboard Raspberry Pi 4 compute module. It is well described in the following two videos.
If you skip to 20:15 in the most recent video you will get a very quick answer. My take-aways follow.
On the upside:
- They changed to a Xilinx FPGA. This may or may not be advantageous from a supply chain/development tools perspective.
- They used a bunch of Xilinx IP in the FPGA. That may or may not be suitable for open source but it certainly makes the firmware design likely to be more modern and reliable.
- Rather than invoke a MAC-PHY interface in the FPGA, they send the data via PCI bus to a Raspberry 4 Compute Module. Having this sort of embedded general purpose processing (GPP) on the provides all sorts of interesting opportunities for a true, thin-client/server architecture. This is something that is desperately needed if openHPSDR is going to move forward into the future.
- The Pi has a fully functional, properly performing GigE interface, something that no prior or current openHPSDR design (Hermes to Orion MKIII) has achieved.
On the downside:
- The current implementation essentially wimps out on the software side, using the Pi either as passthrough to Thetis or as an embedded PiHPSDR processor, rather than as an embedded server to a thin client.
The most recent video:
An older video:
Re: SATURN SDR
Hi, thanks for your very exhaustive explanation.
The are no chance to obtain pcb for experimenter ?
I have successfully homebuilt Hermes and Angelia.
Thanks and have a good new year.
Luca IK2LRN
The are no chance to obtain pcb for experimenter ?
I have successfully homebuilt Hermes and Angelia.
Thanks and have a good new year.
Luca IK2LRN
Re: SATURN SDR
Based on the content of those videos it appears that you would have to contact Laurence directly to determine the availability of PCBs, schematics, BOMs, Gerbers and other design information. I don't know if he is ready to make such information or material available generally.
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