I’ve seen that we can get PCB boards for HackRF One from China in www.ebay.com/itm/201606967050
Given that both HackRF One and LimeSDR projects are fully Open Source, has anyone explored on how to fabricate the PCB Boards for the USB and PCIe versions?
LimeSDR seems to have a more sophisticated PCB process with 11 layers and BGA chips (transceiver, fpga and rams).
I’ve sent a message for the Chinese seller to check if they would be interested in fabricating the PCBs for the LimeSDR PCIe board.
The PCB appears to be a well documented project and we should thank the effort and expertise of Limemicro team to document this Open Source project.
There is also a LimeSDR on eBay from a seller in Germany, if you want another one. I have a hard case for the Lime and HackRF coming as they both need shielding. I was a buyer of the HackRF Blue when they were offered and I sold it to a friend at break even. I don’t think I would want a PCIe version as I find the USB of marginal value.
Larry in El Paso
@wb8lbz_Larry, this seller is just re-selling his LimeSDR USB version v1.4s: www.ebay.com/itm/192145584642 - I would rather buy another new USB unit from crowdsupply. It is neither a PCB nor a PCIe version which seems to be more interesting when doing DSP processing with another PCIe FPGA board in a Desktop PC. 73, Rob kk6ioz
The Chinese seller has replied to my inquiry that he would be able to fabricate LimeSDR PCIe PCB.
The seller wants to know how many people would be interested in LimeSDR PCIe PCB.
If you are interested in a low-cost PCIe PCB, you can send a message to the seller on eBay:
http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FindAnswers&requested=diyelecmall108&iid=201606967050
I suspect that soldering BGAs can be achieved with a temperature controlled SMD station. I happen to have this SMD station which could be used for BGA soldering:
The key point is to control the temperature when soldering a BGA.
