Building a software-defined radio from scratch

Hey! I&#x27;m Lukas, the guy who made this. Just discovered someone posted it on Hacker News, pretty exciting for me. If you want to ask me any questions or make comments, I&#x27;m here and on reddit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;electronics&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4uic5r&#x2F;sdr_platform_ive_been_working_on&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;electronics&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4uic5r&#x2F;sdr_pla...</a>

This is a really impressive project, and I am all the more in awe that this guy is only 18 years old.<p>The project is on Github: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;FreeSRP" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;FreeSRP</a> Reddit discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;electronics&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4uic5r&#x2F;sdr_platform_ive_been_working_on&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;electronics&#x2F;comments&#x2F;4uic5r&#x2F;sdr_pla...</a><p>He&#x27;s selling a small batch of these for $350 apiece - calling it now, he&#x27;s going to be very successful in his career.

<i>I also had done more revisions of the board and spent way more money than I initially planned for... even though in hindsight, having only three revisions for a fully functioning, moderately complex design, with no previous experience working on something like this, probably is not that bad.</i><p>Are you kidding? That falls into the realm of superhuman. I&#x27;ve seen 20 year veterans blow a 100 grand and get half that far. I think even Woz would do a double-take.

Awesome project man. I do EE HW design for a living and this I can attest is a hard project. I have a bladeRF and use it regularly. One thing I try to instill in the people that work on my team is that the best attribute you can have and try to foster in your career is not giving up on hard things. So it&#x27;s great that that is something you have.. To stick with this project for a long time and putting in the time to make it happen. MIT will be a challenge but I&#x27;m sure if you stick with it you will end up doing great. Go for something tough and glad you are coming to the US. I have to apologize for politicians that say we don&#x27;t like foreigners. We do like foreigners and we need them. You will be a great addition to the many awesome people coming here to find there path to great success!

I think the USRP1 motherboard, when I originally used one in 2008, used to be $700 complete&#x2F;$550 for the motherboard. The price now is $719, but that includes the enclosure, cables, power supply, etc...<p>I actually cut my teeth on Python learning GNURadio.

I am curious; what would one actually do with this device once it is working?<p>This is a really neat sounding project.

Amazing project!<p>1. What are your plans for it? Aside from high altitude balloons.<p>2. Do you plan to turn this into a sort of &quot;shield&quot; add on?<p>3. What will you work on after this project is done?

Lukas, your schematic link seems to be broken on the project site. I have been thinking about doing a similar project with this chipset actually. I really want to put down about or 8 of these ADI parts and actually make lower cost phased array development environment. One day....

Could this project, in theory, be done with a 2-layer (front and back) board? I&#x27;m thinking of building a small SoC board... but I don&#x27;t want to shell out hundreds of bucks (and days of shipping time) for prototype PCBs, but hand-etch them instead.

Is it the truth, or just pure genius? I choose second! What an amazing job, well done!

SDR: Software-defined radio