Hello everyone!
This is the first post for my Beaglebone Black Radio Challenge entry. I own a Beaglebone, so I have some experience with it. I even wrote a blog post about it on my own blog about compiling a new Angstrom image and playing around with GPIO pins from the shell. I also own a Raspberry Pi (I teach about using it at my local hackerspace) and couple of Chumby Hacker Boards. I also worked with Gumstix Overo boards while I was writing my B.Sc. thesis.
Project Description
I submitted two project ideas for the challenge:
- An internet radio station: We don't have too many FM stations in Japan, here is a list from Wikipedia if you are interested. The idea is to tune to a channel, and then stream this audio signal through a port to a broadcasting server and also through the speakers or headphones if I can find a suitable USB sound card. I'll have to put some sort of streaming server in between if it cannot handle the load. The connection will be over the Ethernet connector as speed is critical and the radio will be fixed in a location. The display will show some basic information like signal strength and tuned frequency. I've worked with a similar system before in my college days so not all is new to me. But I'll have to learn some of it again as long time has passed.
- A handheld ADS-B receiver: ADS-B is used for tracking aircraft and a similar system also exists for ships called AIS. The idea is to use the SDR to receive the ADS-B messages and show the result on the display. The wireless connection will be used to stream this data to the internet so that others can see what you're seeing on their tablets or from plane tracking websites. This project is the hardest one in terms of hardware as it includes antenna construction (the supplied antennas usually don't perform well at 1090 MHz) and some power electronics in order to have a mobile unit. Software side is easier as there are already some programs written for decoding ADS-B data and I use a couple of them. This project will be most useful for plane watchers as they can see lots of information about the planes about to take off and land. If time permits, I'm planning to design and laser cut a case for it so that I have a compact unit.
Next week I'll play around with my Beaglebone Black and the LCD cape. I'll also try to see if I can directly run dump1090 and see it's web output. This time there will be pictures. 
