AMRAD at Winterfest 2014

[Mike O'Dell]

Terry:
Android *is* a Linux distribution.
It also ships on more smartphone and tablet units
than any other platform. I haven't looked at Android
dev support in a while so I'm not clear on the cost,
but if it's half as good as that for iOS or Win8,
it's probably worth it.

Android apps are written in Java, so you can use Eclipse
as the IDE, but you still need the docs for the APIs
and the compiler for their ersatz JVM as well as the packaging tools.

as for Apple Developer costs - yup, it's $100 a year.
for that you get incredible dev tools (Xtools alone is 
a remarkable piece of software the likes of which sells
for $1000s of dollars on Sun workstations), great docs
and the opportunity to sell your stuff if you build
for iOS. for that price, you aren't lining *anyone's* pocket.

I think you'll find the same level of support from MS
is very similar in cost. The real Code Studio which you
need for signed apps (essentially required now for Windoze 8)
is not free, nor is the documentation required.

Terry, I understand your frustration - i really do.
but the days of "just a C compiler" are long gone.
the app environments these days are very complex and
you need a lot of support to build them. you need a *lot*
of sample code because starting from scratch to build an
app for any of these systems is damn near impossible if
you haven't been working with all the frameworks, toolkits
and libraries all day, every day for quite some time.
even then it would be pointless.

As for MS-Office, if you need it for compatibility for business
purposes, fine. If you are doing anything else, spending money
on Orifice when LibreOffice is as good as it is needs a *very*
compelling reason.

I have a FunCubeDonglePro+ and it is *very* nice indeed. 
SMA-F antenna and i have an SMA-M/BNC-F pigtail which does
the job nicely for interfacing to skyhooks. 

The radio itself is very spiffy and is a complete redesign
from the original Funcube Dongle. It has over twice as many
parts on a 6-layer circuit board. It includes things like
a good LNA and a switchable 5v bias T built-in. Samples at 192KHz.
It has an *11* band pre-selector
filter bank - and the filters for 2m & 70cm are SAW filters!
the other 9 are 3rd or 5th order LC filters.
(again, thank your cellphone for making things cheap)

The software for the Mac is nice indeed. Plug in the goober,
start the software, and connect the antenna after staring
at the flat spectrum display for a minute. (oops)

http://www.hamradio.co.uk/sdr-software-defined-radio-amsat-uk/funcube/funcube-dongle-pro-new-pd-4094.php

	-mo