5 comments

  • mallets 40 minutes ago
    So many $1 wireless ICs have a powerful "SDR", but will never be documented due to certification/compiliance/export-control reasons. The projects listed here rightly limited the scope to RX-only but Espressif might be forced to "patch" this away if arbitrary TX too is possible (or starts making headlines). Hope it doesn't come to that, more cheap options for RF-to-bits is always welcome.

    On a technical note, not much I can find about the signal quality. Phase noise, images, DC Offset, etc. Have to get my hands on one, ESP32-S31 seems promising.

    • BlackRabbit1 29 minutes ago
      I'm pretty sure that that WiFi-7 modems have a similar modes up to 320MHz.
    • ErroneousBosh 32 minutes ago
      > The projects listed here rightly limited the scope to RX-only but Espressif might be forced to "patch" this away if arbitrary TX too is possible

      Why would they? It's perfectly legal to operate radio transmitters on any frequency you like, if you hold a suitable licence.

      • mallets 21 minutes ago
        Legal for end-user, sure. But Espressif might run into trouble with regulators like FCC.
  • drtz 7 minutes ago
    Since I'm a little slow and it took me a minute:

    SDR in this context is software defined radio.

  • xd1936 24 minutes ago
    Very exciting!

    > However, the current prototype uses the FPGA to clock the ESP32, which results in poor phase noise.

    Looks like this was solved five days ago:

    https://github.com/h0m3us3r/eSpDR/commit/41a0ffe279119df942e...

  • BlackRabbit1 39 minutes ago
    As far as I follow the research process it's currently quite difficult to get all of it (like the 80MSPS@10-Bit showcase on Reddit) to a computer without a FPGA+USB3.

    With the new ESP32-S31 we most likely can extract the I/Q data over a 1 GBit/s interface. Guessing something around 20-40MSPS should work.

    These modules will most likely will be a revolution for 13cm ham radio. With the new 5GHz ESP32 modules most likely also for 5cm. As all Espressif components are WiFi-qualified we can expect a very very stable and robust radio.

    I ordered a few and waiting for Ali to deliver them to my lab.

  • ErroneousBosh 33 minutes ago
    > undocumented feature that lets the firmware bypass the fixed WiFi and Bluetooth functionality and instead capture raw IQ baseband samples

    So kind of like those TV USB sticks that you can adapt into proper SDRs?

    • brcmthrowaway 29 minutes ago
      Yep, Matt Ettus converted that to hundreds of millions of dollars
      • BlackRabbit1 25 minutes ago
        RTLSDRs only have a 8-Bit ADC that easily drown next to strong transmitters.

        I remember the Ettus devices to be much much more powerful.