Ettus publishes the schematics. They are sometimes out of date but
not hard to figure out if you have an actual board in front of you
and take a little time. What the BOM? Look at a schematic and a
board and figure it out. It’s not like anyone is trying to stop you.
You want layout files? You think there’s something wrong with Ettus
withholding them? Fix the situation. The design is free in the
sense that you are free to hire your own engineer to make your own
layout from Ettus’ free schematics. Then after you pay for that you
can put your money where your mouth is and put those layout files on
the web under GPL. You’d be the big hero who put Matt in his place.
– David
On Feb 5, 2010, at 1:20 PM, Don F. wrote:
While to the letter of the law he did provide the above details, he
has/will not provide all the information/engineering drawings
necessary for people to roll their own boards or to import existing
designs so they can be modified to suit a person’s/organization’s
project. I can understand why being this is how he makes a living,
but at the same time he shouldn’t be promoting the design as open
source… just open architecture-ish…
David A. Burgess
Kestrel Signal Processing, Inc.
David B. wrote:
You want layout files? You think there’s something wrong with Ettus
withholding them? Fix the situation. The design is free in the sense
that you are free to hire your own engineer to make your own layout
from Ettus’ free schematics. Then after you pay for that you can put
your money where your mouth is and put those layout files on the web
under GPL. You’d be the big hero who put Matt in his place.
– David
Because one possesses the schematics doesn’t mean one can make their own
layouts. All Amateur Radios come with schematics but I don’t see droves
of people copying their product. Repair shops are filled with
schematics of devices but yet I don’t see them selling bootleg copies
out the back door.
That’s why people buy the product.
And that’s why Matt deserves the props and profits he gets.
But for the longevity of an open source project, some files should be
released such as this. Look at the RepRap. All the pieces can be
reproduced from the board level up to the bracket.
And before we go personal here, let’s not discuss your project and how
you’re working other people’s efforts to your advantage.
(For which I’m a supporter of…)
Don-
But what happens
when your project won’t fit into the square form factor? What if you
have this great idea but can only fit into the form factor of say a cell
phone… then what? I’m not the only one with the same idea… Look at
the beagleboard guys doing their USRP work.
The Beagle board replaces the server, not the radio hardware. Beagle
board guys are not working on shrinking the RF
circuitry, at least yet.
-Jeff
All,
Sorry for the sh*tstorm… 
Jason wrote:
Don F. wrote:
So I guess I should be the first one to ask:
How will this affect the GPL and Open Sourceness of the USRP project?
More specifically, I see the pdfs of the schematics [1], but is there
location to pull the .sch and .pcb files (or proprietary format
equivalents) from? I checked the gnuradio src tree [2], no luck…
The intent behind my question was that I assumed the files were out
there and I just couldn’t find them. I saw this [1] a few weeks ago,
and thought a more application specific SDR might be an appropriate
solution. Especially since Harald raised concern with finding a GSM
chip
“where you can still find the parts on the market, but which still has
sufficient leaked documentation that you can write an open source driver
for it.”
My thought was to avoid the GSM chip, and implement an SDR in an FPGA.
Since building an Open Source GSM phone board would be new territory for
me, I thought I might be able to “stand on shoulders” and learn from
existing designs. My gEDA/PCB work to date has been rudimentary at best
and hasn’t been concerned with RF. So, I need all the help I can get.
Anyway, that’s why I was asking.
thx,
Jason.
[1]
http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2010/01/07/#20100107-gsm_devel_board-planning
On 02/05/2010 08:17 PM, Don F. wrote:
Good for you to support the project at an early stage. But what
happens when your project won’t fit into the square form factor? What
if you have this great idea but can only fit into the form factor of
say a cell phone… then what? I’m not the only one with the same
idea… Look at the beagleboard guys doing their USRP work.
Then you take the schematic-capture and BOM files (which are hard to get
at the moment,
I’ll give you). You run the auto-routing, which, in my experience,
takes care of 85-95% of
the task, and you have a board layout in your new “squeezed” format.
In fact, the existing
PCB files are nearly-useless for taking the existing layout and
squeezing it into a new form
factor–particularly one as dramatic as the existing square board and
packing into a
cellphone format. There’ll be virtually 100% “rip-up and re-route”.
I give Matt major props for developing the hardware, I really do…
The rest of you are just appliance users.
What a lovely “appliance” it is, too. But really? The dozens of core
developers of Gnu Radio who’ve
built an entire eco-system around USRP1/2? They’re “just appliance
users”? Oh yeah, right.
Hardware is hard, and software is easy.