[Hackrf-dev] HackRF for BeagleBone Black

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 11:06:02PM +0000, RickS via HackRF-dev wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am in the process of designing a version of the HackRF One that will use a BeagleBone Black (BBB) in place of the micro-controller and CPLD.  I already have the board laid out with two headers that will accept the BeagleBone.  I had to enlarge the board a bit as well as add a couple of support parts.  I tried to leave the rf section alone.  I have done some testing bringing DA0 - DA7 to one of the headers of a BBB along with the clock.  I was able to use PRU1 to sample the data lines during receive and pipe them through the network to GnuRadio for monitoring and demodulation.  The throughput is fairly good maxing out the 10/100 port on the BBB at about 11MBs.  I am planing on porting an open-source SDR-DSP core to test processing the IQ data directly on the BBB.  I will use QtRadio as the control interface.
> 
> It was Mr. Ossmann who suggested using the BBB processor as it contains two 200MHz real-time controllers (PRU).  I looked at simply replacing the existing controller with the BBB microprocessor but that was going to be a little more than I wanted to handle.  The BBB has most of the processor IO available on it's headers anyway. Plus, buying a built up BBB is cheaper than adding the individual parts to the HackRf.
> 
> This may become an Indiegogo project to see how much interest there is.  Any suggestions or comments are welcome.
> 
> Regards,
> Rick
> KD0OSS

> _______________________________________________
> HackRF-dev mailing list
> HackRF-dev at greatscottgadgets.com
> https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/hackrf-dev


I can't remember where I saw it now but somebody was reckoning that a BBB was relatively RF noisy and could generate interference. What would be interesting would
be doing this with a Cubietruck because that has more flash memory.

Part of the problem is that there are a lot of bits flying around - small, small ARM boards without good FPGA bolted on are not so good at this.

Now if the Parallella had really taken off :(

All the best,

AndyC

G0EVX