On Jan 2, 2011, at 1:31 PM, Andrew Rich wrote: > I have a MacBook PRO I7 it can run OS X or windows
I have been successfully using the Ettus Research USRP with LFRX, LFTX and WBX boards on my 17" MacBook Pro under OS X (Snow Leopard). Installing the software portion is pretty easy: Install the MacPorts package, then run "sudo port install gnuradio" in a terminal window. You can play with the gnuradio software to see if it's right for you before committing to buying any hardware, since it can use the audio device and/or data files as a source/sink, or even run entirely simulated flowgraphs. I haven't used any gnuradio-based canned ham radio USB/LSB/whatever applications (if any exist). I have successfully received 2m FM transmissions with one of the examples that comes with the gnuradio distribution. I've mostly used my hardware to generate fairly simple test signals for other radio hardware (i.e., a number of simultaneous CW tones within a fairly narrow bandwidth) and simple spectrum analysis. At the moment, I'm playing around with writing blocks and flowgraphs for sending and receiving high-speed Morse code, due to my current interest in devices such as the AN/GRA-71 code burst keyer (*). This is all pretty simple stuff that the USRP hardware is overkill for, but I'm just beginning to learn about gnuradio and SDR design in general. Based on what you've stated so far, I think that a USB-based USRP with a WBX board and the gnuradio software should work nicely for you, and you can work with it directly under OS X. You may also want to get an RFX2400 board to hit the 2.4GHz band (I have one, but haven't done much with it yet). This board combination will leave a hole between 2.2GHz and 2.3GHz. If I recall correctly, I've generally set my hardware decimation to limit sampled bandwidth to about 2 MHz in order to avoid USB over-runs and/or under-runs. I've been able to look at a 4 MHz bandwidth with occasional over/under-runs. The occasional over/under-run doesn't seem to cause problems when just visually watching an FFT plot (i.e., to look for activity within a band). I don't know if the Ethernet-based USRP platforms work on Macs yet. (*) More info here if you're curious: http://www.militaryradio.com/spyradio/gra71.html These are available (though rare) on the surplus market, but I'm unaware of any of the original receiving equipment that has made it out to the hands of collectors. A SDR setup seems like a natural way to handle receiving the code burst and then either playing it back at low speed for manual decoding, or automatically decoding the transmission at normal speed. -- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <n...@nf6x.net> Web page: http://www.nf6x.net/ GnuPG public key available from my web page. _______________________________________________ Discuss-gnuradio mailing list Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio