RoadTest POLL: Would You Be Interested in Roadtesting an SDR Active Learning Module

Yes I am interested as I mentioned PLUTO in preivous poll. I chosen over 80 hours based on my experience with previous roadtest which always took me huge amount of free time and also I would have to learn a lot new things related to analog and RF. In this area I am not very skilled yet, so PLUTO looks like good entry point.

This kit would be fun to play with.

Currently overloaded hehe, but this has got to be one of the best SDRs to work with because it comes with software!

In contrast, I have Lime SDR which is technically on paper great, but in practice suffers loads from lack of software examples and documentation 

The guy who did their technical articles tended to 'information-hide' I feel, and never shared enough detail. Lime SDR an extremely frustrating product, so I regret choosing it in some ways.

An SDR is a fantastic tool for all sorts of RF work, often achieving things not possible with other test equipment.

Even a low-cost RTL-SDR is interesting to experiment with, but a more complete SDR like PLUTO offers signal generation too.

As to the time, my first thought was "How much can I get?"  I went with 20-40 because I don't count the time between selection and when the product arrives.  You know... the time where you read everything that you can find about the device while you wait - patiently - for what feels like forever.  I'm like a small child waiting for Christmas or their birthday.

This looks like an interesting piece of hardware, with different applications that can be investigated. With that being said, to really do justice to the roadtest over 80 hours would be necessary to absorb new knowledge and apply it.

SDR is on my list to explore at some point. This looks like a good place to start. For me the learning curve would be steep so I expect it would require over 80 hours. The knowledge gained is a primary objective and it is bound to take time to learn.

Extremely interesting piece of equipment. I think lots of time would be required to get to test to full extent.

Does evaluation include licenses for MATLAB®, Simulink® support, libiio, a C, C++, C# and Python API ? 

Hi Gary,

All the above is free/open source stuff, except the MATLAB item (and its associated Simulink).

MATLAB has a free evaluation for 1 month. It is also available for for home use at about $120, perpetual license, which is a lot lower than its usual cost! however if you're planning to go down the purchase route (it's not essential to use the SDR, but it is highly desirable for all sorts of work), then I'd strongly recommend discussing it in say a forum post, because there are some important things to keep in mind (to save costs). Also, sometimes MATLAB type work can be done for free in Python, but it's not the same, MATLAB has been heavily used for decades and so there are lots of examples that would work directly with MATLAB, but would need porting if Python was used. 

Finally, there's another option called GNU Octave, that is free too, but it would probably need some work (in programming language of choice) to "connect" to the data to/from the ADALM PLUTO. For instance, Python could do it.

The ADALM PLUTO documentation gives examples using different methods, so you could try the MATLAB examples if desired prior to purchasing MATLAB (in case you end up preferring using say GNU RADIO (which is building-block style) or Python or C etc.

I would be very interested. It's a topic I'd like to learn. And it would take me a while to learn. So many options.