There's more information on the FDM-DUO available but basically it's a flexible software defined radio transceiver, with 5W out, that can be used either with a computer as the back end or with just the knobs and buttons on the unit itself.
We're clearly at a cross-road at the moment, where many of the standard amateur radio transceivers are of very dated design (it's amazing to me that the FT-817 is still a current product) and the plummeting price of embedded computers means that advanced software defined radios should be very cheap to manufacture.
Looks very interesting Peter, I wonder how much it's going to cost.
ReplyDeleteJoel
KB6QVI
I think the low cost ARM chips are really changing things. I have a $50 android mini PC (Mk808b) attached to my TV with a RK3066 dual core CPU. It's sort of limited with android. I'll try to linux on it at some point. We will see $100 laptops with Linux fairly soon. Intel have really chosen not to compete in that particular market. What they are looking for is a minimum of $50 per chip. Maybe they will be forced to enter the low cost market at some stage but they will be very late (unless they have something up their sleeves).
ReplyDeleteSDR radios are going to become very cheap.