Level RF

&gt; In the summer of 2012, I started a company with some other Georgia Tech students called Level RF. We went through Y Combinator and lots of really cool and interesting things happened, which you should ask me about sometime. The company ended up pivoting into Soylent, but this page is to release all the hardware and software I developed while I worked there.<p>Alright, I&#x27;ll ask.<p>How the <i>hell</i> did that happen? The company went from designing RF electronics to manufacturing processed food? What?

<p><pre><code> I had never done any RF engineering before, so I taught myself using amateur radio books and classic resources like the Handbook of Black Magic, as well as some mentors from Stanford and the 50 MHz and Up club who were kind enough to answer my questions. I went through 4 iterations of the design in as many months and the progression is pretty interesting... </code></pre> Incredible. It&#x27;s kind of unfortunate that hardly anyone who reads this will understand just how impressive this degree of autodidacticsm is, given the boards you ended up (successfully) designing. Nice going!

I just want to attest to the level of tenacity and dedication needed to accomplish what was done at Level without a significant RF background. PCB design is one thing, but duplicating some of the functionality of expensive software defined radios as part of a commercially viable product is a completely different beast.<p>Furthermore, Hunter is, without a doubt, one of the most amazing Electrical and Computer engineers I&#x27;ve ever met. Fortunately, he&#x27;s just as passionate about teaching as he is about engineering, and spent a large amount of his time at Georgia Tech teaching and inspiring other students about electrical engineering. I&#x27;m <i>extremely</i> grateful to call him a mentor and a friend, and I definitely encourage HN readers to check out some more of his projects at his website.

It is pretty bold to start an RF company with no RF background. It sounds like it was a fun adventure. I wonder why the author didn&#x27;t stay at Soylent after the pivot.

I&#x27;ve found the HackRF One [1] to be the next step up from the $20 TV tuners an Amazon [2] and the Ettus Research $2700 dream setup [3].<p>[1] <a href="https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;greatscottgadgets.com&#x2F;hackrf&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/RioRand-Receiver-Low-Cost-Software-Defined/dp/B008XFDHWW" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;RioRand-Receiver-Low-Cost-Software-Def...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.ettus.com/product/details/E310-KIT" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ettus.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;details&#x2F;E310-KIT</a>

I submitted this 11 hours ago and it got zero votes during the first several hours. I thought it was lost to the depths of HN, how did people find it so many hours later?