A DSP project for consderation

[Robert E. Seastrom]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see anything that
requires much in the DSP department.  I mean, heck, my AOR keyer
(takes a straight key or a paddle) displays the message as you send
it, and what does it have inside?  A PIC or a 68HC11 or something like
that.  No-brainer for the input side...  in fact, there is probably
already code out there that we could lift.

The output side is easy too.  Writing software to take ASCII and send
it out the sound card as ASCII with an adjustable fist is maybe a
weekend's worth of work, probably less.  Some friends of mine had Ann
Arbor Ambassadors (terminals with the approximate intelligence of a
VT100) doing that in the mid 80s via a "secret" downloadable-program
backdoor.

The network protocol specification could use some development; this is
the Achilles heel of your outline.

The tough (time-consuming) part for this project though is the GUI.
This is a tall order, with requests for things like radio slide-rule
dials that don't even have close approximations in anyone's UI
toolkit.  This means developing Windows widgets (or do they have a
different name under windows than they do under X?) from scratch.
Heck, what platform are we talking about anyway?  Unix with X Windows?
Microsoft?  If you want kids to be able to use it without polishing
the disks on Mom and Dad's PC, it had better be the latter.  There's a
lot of unspecified stuff here as well.  What effect would antenna
selection have?  Power would presumably cut down on perceived QRM on
the far end...  Anyway, my anticipation is that you will spend more
than an order of magnitude more time getting the UI right than you'll
spend on everything else combined.  Not trying to scare anyone off
here, just relating my experience with software development.

Anyway, a custom serial driver for the serial port that timestamps CTS
translations (hmmm, sounds like a NTP PPS clock driver to me), a bit
of utility-grade soundcard programming, and a heck of a lot of
standard Windows development.  No heavy-duty DSP to speak of.  But a
lot of time...  and if there is anyone in our circle of friends here
who is sufficiently enamored with coding for Windows that they want to
take a crack at it, they should let me know so I can buy them a beer.
Or a twelve-pack.  They'll need it.
                                        ---Rob