[VWS] Pluto+ came in the mail

[Alex Fraser]

A typo, the AD9361 is the more expensive board. The board I got has the 
AD9363.
The board has a more robust FPGA, the Xilinx Zynq-7020 instead of the 
7010.  This gives you 4 times the space to make mistakes.  I'm not a 
very good programmer, but I know how to copy and paste real good.

I set this Pluto aside for a bit so I could finish a "Pod" for my Pifly 
project.  I got a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W with a USB hat on top.  I stuck a 
RTL-SDR dongle in one of the USB and a dual band WiFi dongle in the USB 
at the other end.  Why not the onboard WiFi on the Zero 2W?  First, I 
will need to switch between 2.4 and 5.8 gig WiFi ad the Pi Zero 2W only 
does 2.4 and second I tried adding an U.FL connector to the board for an 
external antenna and completely messed up.  I turned off the native WiFi 
on the board with software (shopping for a binocular microscope).
Anyway I started this email in the afternoon and then got crazy busy 
working on the pod.  The pod is finished and mounted on the DJI Phantom 
3 S (W/O camera).  I hope for first flight tomorrow, I'll get some pics 
and of course make a YouTube video.  Retirement is hard work....

On 9/30/2026 6:22 PM, 'alex fraser' via VWS General Discussions wrote:
> I got it on Amazon, but the company name on the board is from 
> Opensource Labs.  The docs from the config.txt URL point the OSlabs 
> too.  It is a AD9363 chip.  Boards with the AD9363 chip cost a bit more.
> I am hoping to fly this Pluto in one of my drones.  Downlink via WiFi.
>
> On 9/29/2026 9:35 PM, Mark Helms wrote:
>> It's nice to know about the Pluto+ (Pro) - it's got a lot of nice 
>> features that the original ADALM-Pluto was missing, in particular 
>> true AD9361 chips and USB-C (as well as Gigabit) which lets you get 
>> at that nice 56 MHz bandwidth, instead of being locked behind USB 2.0 
>> speeds!
>>
>> Where did you buy yours from?  I see SkyBits Lab and OpenSourceSDRLab 
>> have good reputations.
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 12:27 PM 'alex fraser' via VWS General 
>> Discussions <VWS-General at googlegroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>     I couldn't wait.  I went down to my workshop/shack, turned on a
>>     laptop and booted Linux Mint.   I dug out a USB cable and plugged
>>     it in to the computer, then, and this is always the exciting
>>     part, plugged it into the little Pluto. Ah, no smoke, no funny
>>     smell and three tiny, very bright LEDs lit up, one blinking.  I'd
>>     read that when hooked up this way the board appeared as an
>>     external storage device, so I started Mint's file manager and
>>     there it was, a drive named Pluto. I opened it and some files
>>     appeared, one was config.txt which I right clicked and opened
>>     with the native editor.  I had read using my AI Elmer that that
>>     file was where I could change the IP address to match my home
>>     LAN, but I didn't change it just yet.  At the top of that
>>     config.txt file in the comments (behind the #s) was a URL. I cut
>>     and pasted it into my browser and was taken to a page with nice
>>     instructions on the workings of the board, how sweet is that?  I
>>     stopped there.  All in all I spent about 15 minutes  on this.
>>     Seems to me that devices have gotten much more capable, yet are
>>     getting easier to configure, does anyone remember serial ports?
>>
>>
>>     I'm jumping further into SDR.  I ordered a Pluto plus and it is
>>     now sitting in the shack.  So am I.
>>     My first impulse was to plug it in right away, but I'm older and
>>     will wait till tomorrow and till after I read up a bit.
>>     Anyone in the club playing with this gizmo?
>>
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