My Per Vices Phi (Software Defined Radio) arrived in the mail several weeks ago, but I didn’t finally get a computer to run it until yesterday. Luckily I had a spare power supply (it had a dead fan), and a hard drive lying around, so all I needed was the rest of the machine. I ended up buying a $60 Motherboard/CPU combo, and a $13 stick of 2GB RAM. For my project I don’t need a case or a video card or optical drive or dedicated input/display devices, so the overall cost for this project was just under $90 (the Phi normally costs $800 btw).
Right now I turn it on by shorting out two pins with a screwdriver…
My goal is to write Node.js software for controlling the Phi. At it simplest form, this software will be able to set the frequency, send data (with callbacks on completion), and trigger an event when data is being received. Hopefully I’ll be able to write some more code for specific uses (e.g. some bluetooth functionality, wifi, etc.) but those will be separate modules which depend on the basic module.
I haven’t run the Phi yet, but I’m guessing it will be badass. I only wish it could be shrunk to the size of a USB device, then I could hook it up to my Raspberry Pi projects instead of needing a big dedicated device.
Dude this looks awesome, I can’t wait for more updates on it. I really want to find the time to get into some hardware hacking like the phi and pi..
It’s a fun hobby, although hardware stuff costs a bit more than software stuff.
Thomas Hunter,
I am on the ropes on the Phi, but I am going to refer my friend to them from Microsoft. A real C language programmer back when we were teenagers!
Keep up the excellent work!
http://www.Meetup.com/Software-Radio
Sincerely,
Martin