Board for Phase 4 Ground

[ohmoreno]

Hello @jschiefer ,

Did you get some progress with the design/implementation of the adapter board that would allow us to connect an Analog Devices AD-FMCOMMS2/3/4-EBZ board to an Avnet ultra96 processor board?

Thanks for your time.

[jschiefer]

Sorry, I have not made any progress on this, and have no immediate plans to do so. I don't have an FMCOMMS2/3/4 board myself, so my motivation (and ability to test) is very limited...

[ohmoreno]

I would like to contribute to your project, If I send you one (as donation to the project) can you proceed?

If yes - what's the time frame you are expecting?

I also would like all schematics and technical documentation to be public domain or open source hardware.

Nice to meet you, by the way.

Regards
Oscar Moreno

[yrrapt]

@ohmoreno
I might have a crack at this, although I would probably be tempted to just stick the AD9361 directly on the board. There's already a project with the schematic and layout I could use here: https://github.com/daveshah1/RFToolSDR

I've also got a design using the Lime LMS7002M I could stick on. That would cover the two main integrated SDR options and could simply be selected by different assembly options. Doesn't really add much PCB area - PCBs are almost free these days anyway.

The advantage of adding the ICs directly is then people don't need to then pay the ~700 currencies to buy the FMC dev board which is a fair bit of cash.

The down side is that it would complicate the assembly and push the board to a 6 layer. But I think this would still give a large improvement on having to buy the Analog Devices board as well. Plus the FMC connector requires reflow soldering anyway so I don't think there's a huge jump in assembly complexity.

[ohmoreno]

@yrrapt
Interesting, let me check in detail the information you sent so I can comment on it.
The main reason I would like to interface the 2 boards is to take advantage of the power of the Ultra96, and I haven't been able to do that because of its lack of connectivity so I believe that a FMC adapter would be a good idea.
Thanks for your time, I hope we can move forward on this matter.