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<DIV><FONT face="Meta Correios Portugal"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=6>FUNCube Dongle development status</FONT></STRONG>
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<DIV>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma><STRONG>Howard Long, G6LVB</STRONG>, reports that he is
enormously gratified by the large volume of interest shown the FUNcube Dongle
over the past few weeks. With so much interest being shown, Howard took some
time to provide an update about the development progress.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>The <STRONG>FUNcube Dongle</STRONG> was originally designed
to be an accessible way to be able to receive amateur satellites, most notably
AMSAT-UK's forthcoming FUNcube cubesat (</FONT><A
href="http://www.funcube.org.uk/" target=_blank><FONT
face=Tahoma>http://www.funcube.org.uk</FONT></A><FONT face=Tahoma>). </FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>What does accessible mean? Essentially we mean both low
cost and easy to setup. The original target market is, and remains, what Howard
calls, "the unconverted", those, particularly in education, who need a
means of being able to practically introduce and demonstrate real space
technology in a hands-on way.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>When the work on FUNcube was distributed, Howard was
given the task of coming up with the ground segment, and the result is the
FUNcube Dongle.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>As it's tuned out, the FUNcube Dongle has the added bonus
that it's a VHF/UHF and low microwave equivalent to the well-known Softrock in
an integrated plug and play package. The intention is to have two models, an
entry-level frequency-restricted version targeted at the educational market, and
a full blown Pro version that seems to piqued the interest of many radio
amateurs, radio astronomers and short wave listeners.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>In précis, it includes an integrated front end filter, LNA,
quatrature LO, zero-IF quadrature downconverter, dual 16 bit ADC and USB
soundcard. In it's simplest of forms, it's SMA in, USB out. It's also compatible
with pretty much any software that works for the Softrock, for example LinRad,
Spectravue, M0KGK and Rocky.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>The passband is 96kHz, tuneable from 64MHz to 1,700MHz. The
tuning is via a USB HID interface meaning that as well as your favourite
soundcard SDR program, you'll need a little app supplied with the FUNcube Dongle
to control the centre frequency or you'll end up only listening to Howard's
favorite FM broadcast station ;-)</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>It's also compatible with XP, Vista, Windows 7 in 32 bit
and Vista and Windows 7 in 64 bit. Initial testing on the Mac and Ubuntu 32 and
64 bit shows compatibility too, however the frequency control application for
those platforms has not been written yet.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>So, no USB drivers are required!</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>To keep people informed going forward, a blog has been
established at: </FONT><A href="http://www.funcubedongle.com/"
target=_blank><FONT face=Tahoma>http://www.funcubedongle.com/</FONT></A><FONT
face=Tahoma>.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Tahoma>Here is a video of the first pre-production unit: <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaq0QwybFIQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaq0QwybFIQ</A></FONT><FONT
face=Tahoma> </FONT></P>
<P align=left><FONT face=Tahoma>Projected availability of the first production
batch of the Pro version is December 2010. Pricing is subject to assembly costs,
but to give you indicative pricing we are working on an initial price of the Pro
version to be circa USD150/GBP100.</FONT></P>
<P align=left><FONT face=Tahoma></FONT> </P>
<P><STRONG><EM><FONT face=Tahoma>Howard,
G6LVB</FONT></EM></STRONG></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>