To clear up any confusion on price for the LP-PAN,
below are comments directly from N8LP on Feb 13:
There were several issues raised on the Elecraft reflector today, and
below I will try to address them.
First of all, the assumption about price is not correct. The target
price is in the $150 to $200 range, depending on several final
details, partial kit vs. assembled product, etc. Parts selection in
LP-PAN was done with performance, and not lowest cost in mind. The
design includes not only a high isolation buffer, but extensive
bandpass filtering, balanced mixer and IF amplifiers driving high
quality broadband audio transformers. The design goal was not only
excellent performance, but plug and play interfacing between the K3
and a wide variety of sound cards with minimum chance for hum, noise
and other interfacing issues.
The software available for use with LP-PAN is very professional stuff.
PowerSDR from FlexRadio provides an excellent panadapter with very
high resolution, fast response and an unbelievable feature set. It
also provides a second receiver within the LP-PAN tuning range, plus
multiple sub receivers. Add to that the very nice offerings from Alex,
VE3NEA and others around the world. It would be silly not to take
advantage of them.
I have been working with Scott, WU2X, to create an integrated
interface between PowerSDR and the K3. He has done the linking to Ham
Radio Deluxe, and we are talking about a generic linking component to
allow interfacing to any logger that wants to add support. I am
working on a simple applet which will run in the background and use
the linking component to tie PowerSDR to the K3 and a number of
loggers I already support in my other software (HRD, DXLabs,
TRX-Manager and in the works is Logger32 support).
I am also thinking about a full dedicated application, and already
have a number of the key components (spectrum display, rig control,
sound card interface). The time consuming part for me will be the DSP
decoding.
I am also looking into developing an RS-232 router to allow the K3 to
be integrated with LP-PAN and any other logger at the same time. All
my software is free, and these will be no exception. PowerSDR, Scott's
IF Stage version of it and the other applications I have mentioned are
also free downloads.
In short, LP-PAN will be an integrated solution, with the kind of
breadth and depth that makes the LP-100 a system, and not just a product.
73,
Larry N8LP
I was the one who originally guessed $3-500 which turned
out to be far too high. There is now more info about LP-BRIDGE on
Larry's website (about 1/2 way down the following page) which will
allow multiple devices to communicate with the K3 simultaneously.
http://www.telepostinc.com/LP-PAN.html
73, Bill W4ZV
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