From flind at haystack.mit.edu Fri Dec 9 17:13:12 2011 From: flind at haystack.mit.edu (Frank D. Lind) Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:13:12 -0500 Subject: [openradar-echotek] MIT Native Linux Driver Release 2.0 final Message-ID: <4EE287F8.5030307@haystack.mit.edu> Hi, I'm happy to announce the 2.0 final release of the native Linux driver for the Echotek GC314-FS Digital Receiver. This version is reasonably stable and should work well for many applications. Let me know if you find any bugs. The major step in this release is compatibility with Redhat Enterprise 6. We have tested the driver on RHEL 4, RHEL 5, and RHEL 6 series platforms. CENTOS should work as well without modification but I've not tested it directly. There are also greatly improved python support libraries for I/O of the Echotek Raw data format. Configuration files now use updated filters for the GC4016 amd we provide example matlab software for constructing filters. We have now disabled detailed debug logging for both the kernel and data acquisition programs. Finally, there are also lots of other minor bug fixes. Efforts to resolve issues associated with data drops at moderate data rates (> 1.2 MHz total IQ bandwidth or so) have us convinced it is a firmware problem. We do not expect a resolution to this issue. We have also implemented a prototype version of the driver to support IWB and FPGA DDC modes but were not able to obtain output consistent with what we expected. As such, efforts to support those capabilities have been discontinued. The software may be obtained from the Open Radar web site : http://www.openradar.org/cgi-bin/openradar.cgi/Projects/EchotekHardware See the README, REQUIREMENTS, and INSTALL files in the release for detailed notes and information on how to use the software. My plan at this point is as follows : 1. Support of a new Digital RF format as part of a student project this summer. 2. Implementation of data acquisition as a service supporting both file and message queue based output. 3. End of major efforts associated with this hardware device. As a note we do actually have a translator for the Echotek Raw format to HDF5 which we use internally. This translator implements a block output format with extensive metadata. Contact me if there is interest in this software. I appreciate those of you who have waited patiently. I'd also like to thank those who have contributed fixes and found issues. Regards, Frank -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: flind.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 333 bytes Desc: not available URL: