Open Source SDR Ham Transceiver Prototype

https://m17project.org/2025/08/18/first-linht-tests/

117•crcastle•5mo ago

Comments

space_fountain•4mo ago

Very cool, this was one of the projects I really wanted to build before I knew better. Trying to understand what was involved taught me so much. I couldn’t find what analog to digital converter and digital to analog converter this uses which would be interesting

I also think a wider bandwidth would be interesting if impractical. Something like recording everything happening on the 2 meter band would be impractical but very cool. I think

jasonjayr•4mo ago

I have an RTL-SDR that can cover 3.2mhz -- and with sufficient storage IO could record just about the whole 2m band. I want to see if I could find or develop a SDR app that could visualize like sdrpp, or the other popular ones, but keep a 1-2 minute ring buffer of the data so I could jump back to previously spotted signals when watching a band.

Neywiny•4mo ago

Feels like you could put a PR in on this? https://github.com/SarahRoseLives/rtl_tcp_echo

jasonjayr•4mo ago

Possibly -- I think the biggest work is more the UX of the functionality: all the controls and UI for scrubbing around the ring buffer, extending the buffer if you need to work a signal and don't want to lose data, jumping to current, etc.

NoiseBert69•4mo ago

This thing and the new FreeDV audio codec BBFM will be a major breakthrough if they can be combined. The codec offers full 8kHz voice deep down into the noise floor without breaking the legacy channel width.

That would bring ham radio back to the top of the food chain in terms of digital radios.

willis936•4mo ago

That cost is steep. For people willing to trade time for money I bet you could get fab and BOM for a fraction of the price from a place like OSHpark and do assembly yourself.

NoiseBert69•4mo ago

Depends on your tariffs. In Europe JLCPCB is always an option for PCBs. But as soon you order things with components placed on them you'll go into a different tariff regime and it will be $$$ quickly.

willis936•4mo ago

Yeah duties are the silent killer for assemblies. Safest to go with "local" assembly houses that subcontract and make the true cost transparent.

While $100 a unit isn't bad, the $500 buy in is a tough pill to swallow for a solo hobbyist. This doesn't look super fun to hand assemble either though.

8bitsrule•4mo ago

Looks like a project that Adafruit Electronics would have the capacity and experience to put together a great parts kit for. Else, ouch ... power "around 5dBm"? For those of us used to thinking in watts, that's around 0.003 w. ... of UHF.

Thanks to the availability of kits (mostly Heathkit), I got my start in Ham radio (and computing). Learned a lot - and kit prices helped me to afford that.

K0balt•4mo ago

I think this would BOM/build at about $60 At JLCPCB if you did some minor optimizations for Asian supply chains and ordered >20 at a time, so I think we could see these boards eventually around a $100 price point or even less.

I would definitely buy one.

CheeseFromLidl•4mo ago

Apart from a 70cm mention I don’t see frequency specs.

Similar project for HF (kHz to ~30MHz) is the radioberry project, a kind of spin-off from the hermes sdr.

Al Lowe on model trains, funny deaths and working with Disney

Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

Stories from 25 Years of Software Development

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

The Waymo World Model

The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else

Start all of your commands with a comma (2009)

Selection Rather Than Prediction

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

France's homegrown open source online office suite

Coding agents have replaced every framework I used

A Fresh Look at IBM 3270 Information Display System

Software factories and the agentic moment

72M Points of Interest

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

Where did all the starships go?

U.S. Jobs Disappear at Fastest January Pace Since Great Recession

Show HN: Kappal – CLI to Run Docker Compose YML on Kubernetes for Local Dev

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

Learning from context is harder than we thought

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

Making geo joins faster with H3 indexes

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

British drivers over 70 to face eye tests every three years

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

An Update on Heroku

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

Ga68, a GNU Algol 68 Compiler