RadioBanter - Perseus SDR

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I have owned Perseus for 5 months now and it has been on DXpedition to
our Seefontein Atlantic West Coast site. I am mainly a BCB MW and NDB
beacon LF DXer. The Perseus is operated next to my marvellous Icom
IC-7600.

Perseus is a top class performer and has all the bell's and whistles
of an expensive conventional receiver. It's filters are top line and I
found the NR noise reduction even better than my Icom. It is just as
good as the Icom at digging the most difficult stations out of the mud
and is a top class DX machine. It is particularly good at finding
those elusive weak NDB beacons on LF.

Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus. Also you have to do something about the sound, as
the laptop just doesn't produce decent audio. So, be aware that buying
Perseus is not the end of your financial outlay.

Taking Perseus on a powerless DXpedition is a pain - you have to have
power for your laptop and Perseus requires a quirky 5v DC. I did kit
myself out for all this and captured some good TOH top of hour
recordings of the MW+LF band. Analysing these recordings afterwards
yielded a mixed bag. On the plus side I was able to log stations with
good ID's that I had not found with the Icom, but I also had some good
ID's from the Icom that were simply not heard on Perseus. But it's
swings and roundabouts - what you loose on Perseus due to it's lack of
sensitivity and high noise floor, you gain from the extra stations you
hear resulting from recording the full MW band at TOH.

Perseus is not as sensitive as the Icom and introduces more noise,
plus the recording seems to add further noise, that is why you loose
some of the weaker stations.

I am from the older generation and not very computer literate. Perseus
requires some good computer knowledge to install properly and do the
updates that come along. This is reflected on the Perseus news group
as the number of software queries is quite large. I would have
expected the suppliers of this not inexpensive SDR to supply "auto
run" software and updates for the many computer illiterate users like
myself..

All in all a worthy SDR which I give 4 stars out of 5.

John Plimmer, Montagu, Western Cape Province, South Africa
South 33 d 47 m 32 s, East 20 d 07 m 32 s
Icom IC-7600, Perseus SDR
ERGO software
Drake SW8. Sangean 803A, Redsun RP2100
Sony 7600D, GE SRIII, Grundig G8, Eton E100
Antenna's RF Systems DX 1 Pro Mk II, Datong AD-270
Kiwa MW Loop.
http://www.dxing.info/about/dxers/plimmer.dx

FOOTNOTE for those wanting a 5v power supply for Perseus

The Futurlec board worked perfectly - it did not get hot at all and
had 12.5 to 13v DC into it and gave out a constant 5v DC to Perseus
: http://www.futurlec.com/Mini_Power.shtml
It did not emit any detectable RFI

On Apr 9, 5:35*am, John Plimmer wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

Steve wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:35 am, John Plimmer wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

But I run my Perseus with a Acer netbook. I don't do any recording, but
for listening the Atom processor is sufficient.

A top end computer is not necessarily a requirement.

Steve wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:35 am, John Plimmer wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

They specifically require DirectX to run the soundcard DSP. I am not
going to spend $250+ for the privilege. Intel needs to write a DSP
routine that runs on Linux.

On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:31:43 -0700, dave wrote:

Steve wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:35 am, John Plimmer wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

They specifically require DirectX to run the soundcard DSP. I am not
going to spend $250+ for the privilege. Intel needs to write a DSP
routine that runs on Linux.

Even with the cost of a computer and software the Perseus is pretty
reasonable. The filter performance exceeds the majority of receivers
and tranceivers on the market:
http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

Jim

On Apr 10, 6:25*am, dave wrote:
wrote:
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:31:43 -0700, *wrote:

Steve wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:35 am, John *wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

They specifically require DirectX to run the soundcard DSP. *I am not
going to spend $250+ for the privilege. *Intel needs to write a DSP
routine that runs on Linux.

Even with the cost of a computer and software the Perseus is pretty
reasonable. The filter performance exceeds the majority of receivers
and tranceivers on the market:
http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

Jim

I was going to get a Flexradio until I found out you need Windows to use
the thing. *I got the Elecraft K3 instead. *$299 for an operating system
is insane.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

One of the problems with a radio that requires a PC to do the demod is
you can't run 3rd party decoding software on the demod signal since
the sound card is busy doing the demod. [Hope that makes sense. ;-)]
For example, PC-HFDL requires a sound card, but your sound card is
busy with the actual demod. I've got a SDR on loan and it's going
back. I find the need for a computer in the field to be a real
hassle.

To be fair, it's more like $100 for the OS. I put OEM win7pro on my
desktop for a bit over $100 when Fry's had a sale. That all said, I
rather have linux. Incidentally PC-HFDL works fine under Wine. I guess
it didn't need directx.

wrote:
On Apr 10, 6:25 am, wrote:
wrote:
On Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:31:43 -0700, wrote:

Steve wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:35 am, John wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

They specifically require DirectX to run the soundcard DSP. I am not
going to spend $250+ for the privilege. Intel needs to write a DSP
routine that runs on Linux.

Even with the cost of a computer and software the Perseus is pretty
reasonable. The filter performance exceeds the majority of receivers
and tranceivers on the market:
http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

Jim

I was going to get a Flexradio until I found out you need Windows to use
the thing. I got the Elecraft K3 instead. $299 for an operating system
is insane.

http://www.sherweng.com/table.html

One of the problems with a radio that requires a PC to do the demod is
you can't run 3rd party decoding software on the demod signal since
the sound card is busy doing the demod. [Hope that makes sense. ;-)]
For example, PC-HFDL requires a sound card, but your sound card is
busy with the actual demod. I've got a SDR on loan and it's going
back. I find the need for a computer in the field to be a real
hassle.

To be fair, it's more like $100 for the OS. I put OEM win7pro on my
desktop for a bit over $100 when Fry's had a sale. That all said, I
rather have linux. Incidentally PC-HFDL works fine under Wine. I guess
it didn't need directx.

This'll work with the Perseus and windows.

http://www.ham-radio-deluxe.com/

On Apr 9, 1:45*pm, Steve wrote:
On Apr 9, 5:35*am, John Plimmer wrote:

"Owning Perseus requires you to have a top end laptop, otherwise it
will not be able to successfully record the wide 1.6 MHz span, a major
feature of Perseus."

This, for me, is a dealbreaker when it comes to high end SDRs. They do
require top end computers. They also require frequent updates, and
after enough updates even your (currently top end) computer will again
become obsolete. No thanks.

Rubbish. The Perseus (and other SDRs like SDR-IQ, SDR-14 and the QS1R)
will run with any of todays (and yesterdays) computers. If you have a
reasonably new PC (or laptop), you will have no problems. In fact, the
SDR-IQ will run with a pretty lame PC. I've had various SDRs for
almost four years.

Of course, if the reference is the Win98 PC bought in 1999, it's a
different matter.

Bjarne Mjelde

Computers, some of them anyway, can be upgraded.
cuhulin