Personal
I live at 221 Pleasant Plains Road, Stirling, New Jersey 07980 USA with my wife Susan. We have two children, Jennifer and Michael. My main sports are birding and skiing. I also enjoy cooking. I am an exercise junkie, and work out at the gym nearly every day. I retired from Interet Corporation on January 1, 2012. You can email to this address.
Quisk Software
I wrote my Quisk SDR software back in 2008, and I have been maintaining it ever since. It has evolved into a capable SDR and remains open source. For questions and support, please visit the group https://groups.io/g/n2adr-sdr.
Ben Cahill, AC2YD has contributed software to run Quisk remotely over a slow network connection. His software is included with the Quisk distribution. His paper has some valuable information especially about running over WiFi.
Hermes Lite SDR
I am active in the Hermes Lite project. Steve Haynal, KF7O, and a group of interested amateur radio operators have developed a direct sampling Software Defined Radio transceiver. The clock is 76.8 million samples per second, and the bit depth is 12 bits for both transmit and receive. The radio is on a 10cm x 10cm printed circuit board and features both low power and 5 watt RF output. The connection to the controlling PC is via gigabit Ethernet. Low cost is a primary objective, and the project is based on an AD9866 digital modem chip. This is a great project that will bring low cost SDR to everyone.
I designed a filter board for the Hermes Lite 2 so the 5 watt output can be used as a QRP rig.
I designed an Input/Output board for the Hermes Lite 2. It is used to select bands on an attached power amp and to switch antennas located with the HL2.
I wrote a program to connect an HL2 to a WiFi network. The software runs on a Linux single board computer such as a Raspberry Pi. One side of the Raspberry Pi connects to the WiFi network and to the PC radio software. The other side connects by an Ethernet cable to the HL2. Data sent from the HL2 to the PC is copied from Ethernet to WiFi. The transmit samples sent from the PC to the HL2 are saved in a large buffer and are fed to the HL2 at a constant rate. The large buffer smooths out the jitter in the WiFi network.
I also wrote a simple program to set the bias on the 5 watt output transistors. But check for a newer version on the project page.
There may be Hermes Lite 2 hardware available from Makerfabs.com. Search for "Hermes".
Electronics and Software
I first taught myself electronics as a teenager. I used tubes (valves), and I remember how excited I was to get my first transistor, a CK722. Since than, tubes were replaced by transistors, and transistors by integrated circuits. Opamps barely worked at audio, but now they can do 100 MHz. Electronics changes, and I lost track of how many times I relearned it.
I am an amateur at electronics, but a professional computer programmer. My main computer languages are Python, C and Fortran (yes, Fortran 77). I can manage some Verilog, Atmel AVR assembly language, C++ and several Unix mini-languages. I am a big fan of the Python language, please check it out. Python is an easy to use programming language with advanced features like classes and structured exception handling. It is mature, powerful, practical and free. It runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, Macintosh and other systems.
Ham Radio Projects
I got my first Amateur Radio license as a teenager. Amateur radio operators are licensed in the U.S. by the FCC to operate radio transmitters. We "hams" use our stations to chat with other hams around the country and around the world. My teenage license expired when I got busy with college. I got re-licensed later, but that license expired when I was raising my kids. In 2006 I got my most recent license, and I got my old call back, N2ADR.
I am interested in digital radio and Software Defined Radio (SDR). There is a lot of activity in this area. My home station is a homebrew SDR transmitter and receiver. The hardware is my own design, and the software runs on a Windows or Linux PC. It is the only transceiver I have. The only commercial radios I own are an AOR AR8600 receiver and a handheld Yaesu VX-6. The hardware design files and the software for my transceiver are available on this site. Use the navigation links above.