bobjones

I would certainly hope nobody would _expect_ a professional to conduct themselves in that way, nor condone it; against their competition (Ettus), perceived competition (Range), potential customers or anyone on the internet. Anyhow; best of luck to you, I hope your research goes well.

I suspect his product does work, though I doubt the release date - this has been 'available very soon' for about a year and a half now. It's almost entirely based off the USRP1, and I'm pretty sure it uses USRP1 code for the FX2 and FPGA given that it uses the long-since deprecated Ettus libusrp driver. The hardware isn't terribly complex and the Ettus firmware/software has been extensively used so I would guess it would work at near USRP1 performance levels. Good luck.

While you are waiting, here is some background reading - you don't need to take my word :) Very odd twitter posts mocking organizations/companies/conferences he doesn't like: https://twitter.com/WindyCitySDR Last week's banning (again) on OpenBTS forum: http://sourceforge.net/p/openbts/mailman/message/32682120/ One of his several Reddit accounts, announcing the same product he is pitching here. The comments on this one are particularly entertaining: http://www.reddit.com/r/GNURadio/comments/23vm9p/gnuradio_compatible_handheld_wideband_33mhz/ Other strange comments on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/GNURadio/comments/2433lu/fyi_further_discussion_of_nontechnical_matters/ GNU Radio posts where he is again called out for his antics (this time by Tom Rondeau, GNU Radio's maintainer): http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2014-04/msg00423.html A very bizarre international IP battle he gets into with some Indians on the GR Message board: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnuradio/2013-07/msg00049.html The product under discussion is a USRP1 ripoff. That's just to name a few... For the record, his new one might be an awesome SDR and I'm not saying stay away (though I will be...), I just want you and everyone else to be careful and know what you are getting into. Bob.

damavox, I happened to stumble across this, and I wanted to caution you. "WindyCitySDR" is an ex-con named Martin O'Shield. He has spent a good part of the last couple years aggressively attacking Ettus Research, Range Networks, and the RTLSDR, OpenBTS and GNU Radio Communities, etc for unknown reasons. He has been particularly aggressive toward Ettus employees for some reason; so I would certainly take anything he says about that company with a large grain of salt... for example, the post he listed above is from the OpenBTS mailing list; and was addressed by multiple Ettus employees and stemmed from the original author being confused about the frequency accuracy of the included oscillator. B2xx work just fine for OpenBTS provided you deal with the frequency offset (not hard). Just about the entire community is very pleased with Ettus products - the only real downside is the cost. I don't know why he has chosen the software radio community to pollute, but we all wish he would go away! Nobody in the community takes him seriously but he does present a very poor image for us. Of course, it's up to you but I felt compelled to give you a heads up. - GNU Radio Community Member