2021, 2022: ?enormous effort was required to even FIND a raspberry pi. You could expect to spend well over $100, you might have to pay 170 and buy a complete starter set up to get one¡
For example:
When I blew two raspberry pies in one of my radios, (trying workarounds around the horrible spurs) I was simply out of luck for almost a year because I just couldn¡¯t find any at a reasonable price to buy
Our group has used raspberry pies for years in deployed systems, but it became cheaper to buy an entire laptop computer, the evolve three, which became available at $60-$80 in quantity! ?
Contrast that to the situation today:
$59-$65 !! ?Half the current price of an evolve three!!
So times have changed dramatically. ?
The biggest problem is that I have with the current sbitx and with the DE:
It took me months to get the DE to be within FCC guidelines. ?I changed circuitry and added changes to the software to reduce the spurs?
I bought a used V2 and between me and fate, blew 2 diode¡¯s that weren¡¯t well protected¡Re resulting in signals easily getting around the low pass filter¡¯s¡. and again it took months to figure it out. ? I added protection to those diode¡¯s.?
Just while I was packing the unit into a go box, smoke came out! ? Turns out a not well protected MOSFET got blown and that caused other systems to get blown. ?
The current CW reading algorithm is FLDGI which is one of the worst that I know of. ? ?I¡¯m hoping that gets improved.
Thankfully the user community is helping usher out a lot, it¡¯s almost impossible for one person to compete with China!!?
. ?The underrun buffer problem is being figured out just as I am finding places where the circuitry could be better protected
Our county group has radios in the field that have been serving for over five years (just with battery changes every few years ) and have finally been brought down by insects shorting out systems! ?TThat is reliability! ? ?Several in our group have purchased xiegu products. ?I¡¯m almost the only electrical engineer in the group and when they see all the problems that I¡¯m dealing with, well, Xiegus look pretty good¡.
Gordon
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On Jan 1, 2024, at 10:23, Dave, N1AI <n1ai@...> wrote:
?On Sun, Dec 31, 2023 at 02:57 PM, Gordon Gibby wrote:
I look at the Raspberries a little differently.? ?As the software improves, the need for computing resources for the basic performance may DECREASE.? ?
I'll offer a little push-back just to illustrate some other points of view.??
If we call this the optimistic point of view, what works in its favor is that the sbitx software is relatively new and relatively un-optimized and certainly can and is getting better with time.? If it gets optimized and its workload and set of use cases don't expand too much, then I could see an overall decrease in resources.? What works in favor of this direction is the project's designer wanting to use the 512 MB Pi Zero 2W with 512MB so there will be interest in constraining/managing resource growth.
What works in the favor of a pessimistic view is that over decades of computing rarely do workloads and use cases fail to expand, and once a resource gets priced low enough code gets optimized in favor of using more of that resource.? ?From what I've observed there was a maniacal obsession on conserving memory in the 60s through the 80s, perhaps easing in the 90s, definitely more relaxed in the 00s and beyond.? ?
My discussion of Pi 5 and future Pis is just to get people thinking about what the future trends could be in the hopes the sbitx and its follow-ons can be as useful as possible in the years to come.?
So I see the lower prices on R Pi 4's as a chance to get a spare or two.? ?
I'm not seeing those lower prices on Pi 4s yet.? As mentioned earlier, there is only a five dollar difference between Pi 4 and Pi 5 at the same memory size.? We also see the prices for new Pi 3s haven't fallen to dirt-cheap levels.? I think that's the way it will go.? The Pi team will want to gradually favor production of the new stuff and to do that they can't undercut the new by selling the old cheaply.? ?Another thing to consider is there are other embedded systems out there so Pi does have competition and that means they will keep releasing new things year after year.
I'm sure there will be / are Pi 4s on the used market at good prices (I'm counting on it!) and that's fine for end-users but perhaps not so relevant for the vendor of sbitx.
If that will run the sBitx, then that radio is now functional and away I go.? ?At the moment I have one in an almost finished homebrew "go-box".? ?I am less concerned about cpu performance and more concerned about mounting the auto-antenna tuner, adding in a ferrite FT240-43 1:1 choke balun and I built an analog meter($8) based system that lets me watch either DC current draw or RF voltage output (proxy for power in a 50 ohm load).? ??
We should also consider that some people's enjoyment might come from replacing the current CW algorithm with one that uses AI techniques and would appreciate having a more capable CPU, or adding some new form of digital voice, or doing deeper FT8 decoding algorithms, or getting extremely good responsiveness when doing traditional ham radio things.?
Everyone is different, and every one of you play an important role!? ?So I cheer on those who will get us to RPi 5's and 6'ss and beyond, and those who will make the software run on the equivalent of two 2n3904's and a candle!? ?More power to you all!
Make the dadgum thing RELIABLE!? I see lots of improvement in that direction.? ?My team members still see the reliability of G90's as a huge factor.? ?
I agree!
Glad to hear you are active in Field Day, SHARES, EMCOMM, etc and have a great team around you.
Thanks for having a positive attitude to all of the above.
I wish you and everyone reading a great 2024!
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Regards,
Dave, N1AI
