Tagged: great scott gadgets

Great Scott Gadgets to Develop a Universal Radio Test Instrument (URTI)

Great Scott Gadgets (GSG), creators of the HackRF, YARD Stick One and Great FET (among other products) have announced that they are developing a device called a "Universal Radio Test Instrument (URTI)". They note that:

URTI will offer radio amateurs, researchers, educators, and professionals an affordable, compact RF test tool that could be used in place of multiple expensive pieces of traditional radio test equipment.

Our goal for URTI is to design a single hardware platform capable of serving as many popular types of one-port or two-port RF test instruments. We plan to build a directional coupler into a wideband, full-duplex SDR platform to enable URTI to function as a:

  • spectrum analyzer
  • vector network analyzer
  • vector signal generator
  • vector signal analyzer
  • antenna analyzer
  • power meter
  • frequency counter
  • full-duplex SDR transceiver

The design and hardware of the URTI appear to still be in the very early stages, with nothing other than early component lab tests released yet. However, given the track record of GSG products, we expect that they will release a high quality and completely open source product in time. We look forward to tracking the progress of the URTI.

More information about the device is available at https://greatscottgadgets.com/2023/05-04-development-of-a-universal-radio-test-instrument

Michael Ossmann & Kate Temkin Present Software Defined Everything with GreatFET One

At the Hackaday Supercon Michael Ossmann & Kate Temkin presented a talk called "Software-Defined Everything" where they demonstrated some applications of the "GreatFET One" interface board. Michael Ossmann is best known for creating the HackRF software defined radio which is a highly versatile and low cost open hardware/software SDR transceiver. His company Great Scott Gadgets also employs Kate Temkin who is the lead software developer who worked on their latest product called the GreatFET One.

The GreatFET One is a multi-purpose digital interface board that plugs into a PC via USB. It contains multiple digital IO pins, supports SPI, I2C, UART and JTAG serial protocols, can do logic analysis, and also has a built in ADC and DAC.

In the talk Michael and Kate show how a simple light sensor can be plugged into the GreatFET's ADC, allowing the sensor's data to be digitized and processed in GNU Radio. This results in a software defined light sensor. By analyzing the light data in the frequency domain via an FFT graph they're able to determine the refresh rate of the ceiling lights.

Later they also show how GreatFET can be combined with i2C sensors and GNU Radio to do creative things like use an accelerometer as a microphone for a guitar pickup, with audio effects like guitar clipping controlled by GNU Radio blocks.

Michael Ossmann & Kate Temkin - Software-Defined Everything