User talk:Duggabe

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Tech writing presentation

This is a DRAFT.

Preparation

  • GNU Radio Main Page
   https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/Main_Page
  • A Newbie's Guide to the GNU Radio Universe
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxAW-WzuNy0

Background

  • Amateur radio operator since 1953
  • Electrical Engineering degree 1961
  • Computer programmer since 1962
  • Retired 2003

What is GNU Radio

GNU Radio is a free and open-source software development toolkit that provides Digital Signal Processing blocks to implement Software Defined Radios.

Why did I get involved?

I discovered GNU Radio when reading an amateur radio manual. I thought it was a fascinating concept to use software instead of hardware to create a radio. After reading the "discuss-gnuradio" mailing list for a while, I noticed a recurring topic of "GNU Radio documentation is terrible". Looking at it, I had to agree, and decided to do something about it.

Learn by Doing

  • When I got involved, the switch to using a Wiki was new. Many of the blocks were just skeletons with no real content. For example, https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php?title=Cvsd_encoder is yet to be documented.
    • I had to learn to use MediaWiki.
    • I had to learn what a block did before I could write about it!
    • After the first year of working on them, I had done about 150 blocks.

Help others to Learn

I have found that the best way to learn about a technical subject is to study a turorial about it. However, there were very few tutorials, and they were out of date because of newer software releases of GNU Radio.

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