What's with the male USB type-A connector at the board edge? Are users actually supposed to plug the board straight into their computers? Seems like a recipe to break connectors, the board is a strong lever with that length.<p>If that's not the idea, the more correct way would be to use one of the USB connectors meant to be placed on cabled devices like B, mini-B or micro-USB.
I don't know if it's me but there doesn't seem to be any tech specs. How is the wave form generated, and is there provisioning for amps?<p>As a ham theres a lot of stuff SDRs do well, and interfacing with old infrastructure isn't one of them.
This would be okay for experimentation. It will not be able to run as a UMTS or LTE base station or anything like that. Mostly because the software required to do that is not available and not feasible to be done "from scratch". Those protocols are huge and riddled with patent claims.<p>A minor issue would be that UMTS and LTE base stations need 0.1ppm frequency precision (a GPS lock) which is missing here.<p>I wonder if the authors misrepresent their product knowingly, or if it's just a lack of knowledge.
I don't think the comparison on their site is fair. The Ettus B200 series uses an Analog Devices chip that has a 640MSPS sampling rate, the Limemicro chip can sample at 61.4MSPS at most. Even if the RF bandwidth is the same, the Limemicro chip will have poorer performance by perhaps an order of magnitude. So I'm not quite sure how it qualifies as next generation, even the 4 year old HackRF has better frequency specs.
This makes me wonder how likely users of SDRs are to run afoul of local radio frequency interference laws.<p>For example I'm suspect that running an unlicensed 4G/LTE base station out in the wild is legal (no matter what the intentions for use are).
Wow, this actually looks excellent if those specs are legit. A bit higher bandwidth than a BladeRF, and wider range than the BladeRF+xb200, for about half the price. If I was in the market, I'd probably get this.