What hardware and software platforms work well for development and testing?

[Phil Frost]

I'm wondering, as people develop and test these communications protocol
stacks, what hardware and software is useful.

For HF hardware, any rig with a USB mode seems to be quite sufficient. I
also have a Softrock kit. For VHF and UHF, getting at the RF before it's
been demodulated is harder. What is available that will let me
arbitrarily play at the physical layer?

On the software side of things, obviously there are the APIs offered by
specific implementations. But what about broader frameworks that provide
a more rapid way of interconnecting components? I've been exploring GNU
Radio. Are there similar tools I should know about?

As a secondary question, I'm curious about what OS people are using in
development. Most free software development I'm familiar with does not
take place on Windows. However, in the amateur radio space, Windows
dominates, even in spaces where I'd think a non-windows mentality would
prevail, such as SDR software (my reasoning being that anyone interested
in tinkering with the guts of their radio might also like to tinker with
their OS). Is that true here as well?

[Matthew Pitts]

Phil, The main development of Codec2 and FreeDV has been done on Linux for the most part; any Windows stuff is usually either cross compiled or natively compiled with free software tools. Matthew Pitts N8OHU Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

---

From: Phil Frost <ind...@bitglue.com>;
To: <digita...@googlegroups.com>;
Subject: [digitalvoice] What hardware and software platforms work well for development and testing?
Sent: Tue, Jun 11, 2013 1:11:37 AM

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[br...@perens.com]

We are writing in C and C++ and using wxWidgets for the GUI. This is
platform-independent enough that we can develop and run on Windows, Mac,
and Linux, and the codec and modem also run on embedded processors of the
STM32F4 class and up. Floating point is required and it's not tiny in its
memory footprint.

GNU radio is useful, but actually hasn't played a part in Codec2/FreeDV
development yet.

David has made extensive use of GNU Octave in prototyping the codec and
modem. He has found its graphical capabilities very useful.

Thanks

Bruce