Lime Microsystem’s LimeSDR features Snappy Ubuntu Core, allowing anyone to write their own apps for any number of projects. (via Lime Microsystems)
Back in June of this year, Lime Microsystems successfully funded their LimeSDR platform on Crowd Supply, garnering over $777K with a $500K goal. The company touted the board as ‘a low-cost, open-source, apps-enabled, software defined radio’ that can be used for everything radio- cellular base stations, media streaming, drone/RC control, IoT, you name it. What’s more, since the board is open-source in every way and outfitted with Snappy Ubuntu Core, users can write their own code or apps and share them with others in much the same fashion as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino communities.
Think of the LimeSDR as a development board for radio-based projects as it can handle a myriad of wireless communication standards including UMTS, LTE, GSM, LoRa, Bluetooth, Zigbee, RFID, as well as a wide frequency range of 100 KHz to 3.8 GHz. Lime’s choice of electronics makes it easy to use whatever standard you want as it features the company’s LMS7002M MIMO FPRF RF transceiver paired with an Intel/Altera Cyclone IV EP4CE40F23 FPGA, allowing it to carry out DSP (Digital Signal Processing) tasks on the hardware.
Rounding-out the LimeSDR is 256Mb of DDR2 of onboard RAM, a Cypress USB 3.0 controller, Rakon RPT7050A oscillator, 10 U.FL (6 RX/4 TX) connectors and a series of programmable LEDs. So what has been happening with Lime Microsystems since the successful crowd-funding campaign? According to a Crowd Source update, they are busy acquiring all the components needed to build the boards before they can ship them to those who pledged and are on course to deliver them all by the end of January of next year. Those waiting should check their email as the company will send a message the exact date their LimeSDR will arrive.
Lime Microsystems has also been recently lauded by Frost & Sullivan, who gave the RF company their Technology Innovation Award for their LimeSDR platform and “acknowledging the rising importance of programmable radio frequency (RF) in an increasingly software-driven world.” While there are many competing RF boards on the market, the main reason F&S bestowed their prestigious award to Lime was that none of the competition featured open-source hardware and software or was capable of a wide frequency range, noting that some of the other SDR boards even featured Lime’s RF transceiver chips.
While nobody has yet received their LimeSDRs, it will be interesting to see what the maker community does with them. Will there be a thriving code/app-based community shortly after launch or will it be sometime before there is significant shareware people can use for their projects?
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