[Hackrf-dev] HackRF for BeagleBone Black

[Cinaed Simson]

On 02/22/2016 03:33 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> 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). 

The two 200 MHz real-time controllers will allow the HackRF to transmit
and receive at the same time?

 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
> 
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> 
> 
> 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.

The Cubietruck is probably transiting too.

Also, isn't there a problem with microSD and mmc cards - don't they have
a limited number of writes?

The HackRF is noisy too. I know it transmits at 41.7 MHz and 50 MHz
(which is the strongest) - and in the middle of the band I'm
transmitting on - I've transmitted on 1 band so far.

My doesn't have a RF shield - I don't trust my soldering skills. I'm
going to try an aluminum case.

> 
> 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.

There's a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA cape for the BBB for $90


https://www.element14.com/community/groups/fpga-group/blog/2014/10/03/first-experiences-with-the-valentfx-logi-bone

I think you can configure it without the BBB using jTAG.

Maybe a HackRF cape used with the FPGA cape - where the FPGA cape can
also be used to interface a SATA device :)

> 
> Now if the Parallella had really taken off :(
> 
> All the best,
> 
> AndyC
> 
> G0EVX
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>