VHF/UHF SDR Receiver (coming soon) – G6LVB

VHF/UHF SDR Receiver (coming soon) – G6LVB

I have been following the progress of G6LVB, Howard Long”s fantastic SDR project for the last 2 weeks or so and thought it time to share it with you all.

The FUNcube Dongle was originally designed to be an accessible way to be able to receive amateur satellites, most notably AMSAT-UK”s forthcoming FUNcube cubesat (http://www.funcube.org.uk).

The passband is 96kHz, tuneable from 64MHz to 1,700MHz. The tuning is via a USB HID interface meaning that as well as your favourite soundcard SDR program, you”ll need a little app supplied with the FUNcube Dongle to control the centre frequency.

It”s also compatible with XP, Vista, Windows 7 in 32 bit and Vista and Windows 7 in 64 bit. Initial testing on the Mac and Ubuntu 32 and 64 bit shows compatibility too, however the frequency control application for those platforms has not been written yet.

So, no USB drivers are required!

To keep people informed a blog has been established at: http://www.funcubedongle.com.

Projected availability of the first production batch of the Pro version is December 2010. Pricing is subject to assembly costs, but to give you indicative pricing we are working on an initial price of the Pro version to be circa USD150/GBP100.

Here is a video of the first pre-production unit:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqzTBPLqal0

Breadboarding stage:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaq0QwybFIQ