s/Eric/Tom/g

blair · September 10, 2010, 5:40pm

As some of you know, I’ve been involved with GNU Radio for a long
time. The idea that became GNU Radio started as a conversation over
dinner in San Francisco with John G., something like 10 years
ago.

Interest and use of GNU Radio is currently at the highest level it’s
ever been. I however, have come to a place in my life where I’d like
to devote less of my time to GNU Radio and more to other things.

After discussions with GNU Radio developers over the past several
months, I’m pleased to announce that long time GNU Radio contributor
Tom R. has agreed to take over the GNU Radio “Maintainer” role
from me. For those of you who don’t know Tom, he’s the perfect person
for the job.

He’s smart, has a vision for the future, and has the “cat herding
instinct” required to succeed in the position. Tom received his
Ph.D. in 2007 from Virginia Tech’s Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering.

Johnathan C. will continue to handle GNU Radio release
management and provide professional services related to GNU
Radio.

Matt E. and the rest of the crew at Ettus R. will continue to
crank out low cost hardware for all of us to enjoy.

I plan to continue contributing to GNU Radio, and will be finishing up
some extensions for message passing, as well as some other things
where I’m probably best positioned to do the work.

Bottom line: business continues as usual, and you’ll see more of Tom
and less of me.

Eric

blair · September 10, 2010, 7:11pm

Many thanks for your time Eric!

I have signed myself at many RF groups but I have not seen
yet “this quick help/suggestions” from any.

I bet (hope) you can not keep your fingers off?

As a sample I’m building a NOAA HRPT station using USRP1
http://noaaport.poes-weather.com:8081/HRPT/Sept-8-2010/HRPT-test%20004.jpg

I got the fist fair results today using the TVRX and downconverter from
1.7
GHz.
I hope these snips could inspire some…
http://noaaport.poes-weather.com:8081/HRPT/Sept-10-2010/

Patrik

----- Original Message -----
From: “Eric B.” [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2010 18:38
Subject: [Discuss-gnuradio] s/Eric/Tom/g

blair · September 10, 2010, 8:39pm

months, I’m pleased to announce that long time GNU Radio contributor
management and provide professional services related to GNU
and less of me.
I’m sure you’ll be inundated with this sort of email, but your efforts
to make GNU Radio into what it is today is very appreciated.

–
John O.
CEO/System Architect
Epiq Solutions

blair · September 11, 2010, 7:40am

I’m new here, but I can already tell that GNU Radio is Really Cool
Stuff. Thank you for your great contributions, and I welcome our new
overlord!

–
Mark J. Blair, NF6X [email protected]
Web page: http://www.nf6x.net/
GnuPG public key available from my web page.

blair · September 12, 2010, 1:30am

As some of you know, I’ve been involved with GNU Radio for a long
time. The idea that became GNU Radio started as a conversation over
dinner in San Francisco with John G., something like 10 years
ago.

As one of the guys present at that dinner in early 2001, let me
suggest that Eric has done an incredible job picking up that idea and
running with it for a decade.

We saw that commercial companies were using digital signal processing
to radically simplify and improve their products, but that the free
software world hadn’t learned those lessons. That meant there was
a real opportunity hanging wide-open. Eric jumped on it.

Part of the deal was that I’d pay his salary for the first year or
two, because I knew you can’t really get much public support or
financial support for a free software project until it can actually do
some useful job. Eric spent the first year learning modern signal
processing, surveying existing hardware and existing free software,
then settled on MIT’s “spectra/pspectra” code base as a good place to
start hacking. After the first few years, he found enough academic
and commercial support for GNU Radio that I didn’t need to pay him
full time – and he weaned himself fully off my support shortly
afterward.

Matt E. was an early volunteer who also saw the real-world promise
in free signal processing software. We had reasonable software, but
the available high speed A/D and D/A hardware cost thousands of
dollars and was pretty lame. Matt finished his job designing
Bluetooth circuitry, and then risked everything to design and build
what became the USRP. With Eric’s help, he built up from nothing to a
one-man
design/procurement/manufacturing/stocking/shipping/sales/customer-support/programming
shop, which over the years has matured into the thriving and valuable
business it is today.

Jay Lepreau was another early contributor who saw how GNU Radio could
enable active academic research into cognitive radios. Jay brought us
into his lab at the University of Utah, encouraging researchers at
dozens of other institutions to design their experiments on GNU Radio
and the USRP. He brought us into the academic funding that
significantly matured GNU Radio’s ability to do packet-based
communication. Jay died in 2008 but his contributions live on in this
community.

Along the way we took a few detours into application areas that tested
and honed GNU Radio’s strengths. While Hollywood was trying to force
the FCC to outlaw TV receivers that could receive free over-the-air
digital TV signals (because they’d forgotten to put DRM into them),
Eric and a small team successfully implemented an HDTV receiver using
old PCI-bus digitizer boards and GNU Radio. Hollywood’s engineers
said it couldn’t be done, and we knew they were liars, so we did it.
Indeed, it ran 30x slower than realtime on a dual Athlon motherboard.
But it ran, decoded actual TV signals, and proved to the regulators
and to the standards committee that you’d have to not only outlaw
hardware demodulators, but also software – which EFF had recently
proven to a Federal appeals court was a violation of the First
Amendment. The fucking bastards at the FCC passed the regulation anyway
(Broadcast flag - Wikipedia), but
the American Library Association and Public Knowledge litigated in
federal court, proved that the FCC had no authority to regulate what
receivers do with their signals after reception, and the rule was
struck down. This HDTV demodulator code is still not running in the
latest version of GNU Radio, but I hope someone will work out the
kinks. Modern hardware should be able to do it in realtime.

A second big attempted application area was passive radar. We read
that the US Army’s favorite tactic when invading somewhere was to blow
up all the TV and radio stations because it’s easy to track airplanes
by watching their signals bounce off the planes. It works with
cellphone tower signals, too. Eric spent several years researching
the topic, writing GNU Radio code, and designing antennas and
hardware. Ultimately none of it worked reliably; it took more dynamic
range (or custom differential hardware) than we had, but we learned a
lot and have made it easier for future generations to do this as the
hardware improves.

Eric, it’s been a great decade, and I’m looking forward to the next
big trouble you get into!

John

blair · September 12, 2010, 4:37pm

On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 04:57:26PM -0400, Andrew Ge wrote:

platforms. It’s you, Matt, and a few others who have changed the

I hope that, after stepping down as the “Maintainer”, you will have
more time for other things that you like to do in your life.

Best regards,

Feng (Andrew) Ge, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
Telcordia Technologies, Inc.

Thanks for the kind words!

Eric

blair · September 12, 2010, 4:01pm

Eric,

Many of us are deeply grateful to you for what you have contributed to
GNU Radio development, Q/A, and maintenance. Without your pioneer work,
commitment and dedication, GNU Radio would not be like what we have
today (this applies also to a few other folks you mentioned in your
announcement). As far as I know, many many people, particular students
all over the world, have benefited greatly from your work. Twenty years
after SDR was proposed, it is still hard to find low cost and relatively
good performance SDR software packages and platforms. It’s you, Matt,
and a few others who have changed the landscape. Taking this
opportunity, I’d like to show my gratitude to you folks.

I have personally worked with Tom R… Even though it was just a few
months in 2007, I was able to find out that he is smart, skilled,
dedicated, and passionate about SDR R&D. Since then, Tom, as I have
observed, has been continuously contributing greatly to GNU Radio
development. His philosophy about open source project combined with his
knowledge and skills, I believe, will enable him, together with this
community, to drive GNU Radio to new levels.

I hope that, after stepping down as the “Maintainer”, you will have
more time for other things that you like to do in your life.

Best regards,

Feng (Andrew) Ge, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
Telcordia Technologies, Inc.

On 9/10/2010 12:00 PM, [email protected] wrote:

Message: 26
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 08:38:40 -0700
From: Eric B.[email protected]
Subject: [Discuss-gnuradio] s/Eric/Tom/g
To:[email protected]
Message-ID:[email protected]
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