End of Life Announcement
About three months ago, we announced LimeSDR Mini had transitioned to end-of-life status. At the time, we were hopeful that LimeSDR could remain in production because it uses a different, more readily available FPGA. Unfortunately, availability has remained a problem, with no end in sight, so we've made the difficult decision to also mark LimeSDR as end-of-life. Your action is required if you have an open order for LimeSDR. Read the full update.
Announcing LimeSDR Mini 2.0
LimeSDR Mini, the smaller, two-channel sibling of LimeSDR, is being retired due to ongoing supply chain shortages. In its place, we will soon launch LimeSDR Mini 2.0. As for LimeSDR, LimeSDR with Aluminum Kit, and Ultimate LimeSDR With PCIe Interface, they will remain in production as they are. Read the full update.
Supply Chain Crunch & New RF Filter Bank Demo
The global supply chain crunch has severely disrupted production of Lime products. We're still committed to bringing all Lime products back into regular availability. We're plotting a course of action and we have updated delivery estimates accordingly. In the meantime, we're excited to share a video demo of a new software-controlled frontend filter bank (a.k.a. preselector). Read the full update.
Limited Stock of LimeSDR USB micro Type-B
We have a limited number of LimeSDR USB micro Type-B boards available. The LimeSDR USB micro Type-B board has not been available since 2018, and there are no current plans for another run, so get them while you can! This version features a USB micro Type-B connector instead of USB Type-A connector, but is otherwise identical. Read the full update.
Field Report: Using a Ten64 Network Appliance to Stream LimeSDR Data
This great demo (with a video and source code) uses a new 64-bit Linux networking appliance to stream to the internet FM radio from an attached LimeSDR. Read the full update.
Lime Suite 20.07.1 Released
The new release of Lime Suite includes numerous improvements, along with support for the LimeRFE RF front-end and packaging for Ubuntu 20.04. Read the full update.
Field Report Live Prize Drawing
All of the entries are in from the Lime Field Report contest and we're ready to pick a winner to receive a LimeSDR Mini! Join Crowd Supply live on YouTube as Josh Lifton picks at random. The livestream starts today (8/21) at 4:30 pm PST. Read the full update.
Field Report: OreSat, Oregon's first satellite
Learn how Portland State University is leading a team building Oregon's first satellite, with LimeSDRs providing a communications link. Read the full update.
Field Report: Dronesense, a spectrum-scanning jammer and controller for drones.
Read the full update to see how Ogün Levent used two LimeSDRs to create a drone detecting, jamming, and control platform. Read the full update.
Field Report: A bit pattern generator aligned with the SDR data stream
Learn how to synchronize a LimeSDR with an external data stream for experimentation, development, and testing. Read the full update.
Field Report: LimeSDR Digital Audio Broadcast
Set up your own Digital Audio Broadcast transmitter with a LimeSDR. To learn how, read the full update. Read the full update.
Field Report Contest
Did you do something cool with your Lime technology? Let the world know, by submitting a Field Report to us. You’ll enjoy fame and maybe even a little bit of fortune. Check out all the details in this update. Read the full update.
Announcing LimeNET Micro
We're thrilled to announce the launch of the campaign for the latest addition to the integrated universal wireless family, the LimeNET Micro. LimeNET Micro provides fully standalone SDR at an unprecedented price point and, thanks to the combination of Lime's FPRF and the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, in an eminently compact form factor, with high frequency stability and accuracy, courtesy of integrated GPS and OCXO. Learn more on the campaign page: https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limenet-micro Read the full update.
LimeSDR USB Type-A and Aluminum Kits on the Way
After a delay of a few weeks due to passive component shortages, we're happy to report that production of LimeSDR USB Type-A boards and Aluminum Kits will be complete next Tuesday. Read the full update.
Shipping Status, Volume Manufacturing, and Limited Warranty
Thank you for your patience while we continue to manufacture and ship LimeSDR, LimeSDR Mini, and related products. We are experiencing a modest delay in fulfilling all outstanding orders while we ramp up higher-volume manufacturing and transfer inventory management fully over to Crowd Supply. Read the full update.
HDSDR Support for LimeSDR Hardware
We’re pleased to announce that support is now available for using LimeSDR hardware with the popular Windows application, HDSDR (High Definition Software Defined Radio). Read the full update.
Shipping Update
We just wanted to provide a quick update on the shipping dates for outstanding items. Read the full update.
GPIO Boards Arrived
We are pleased to report that we’ve now taken delivery of the LimeSDR GPIO Boards. Read the full update.
GPIO Board and Hacker Case Updated Shipping Dates
Manufacturing of the LimeSDR Hacker Cases is now almost complete and GPIO boards will soon follow. Read the full update.
Competition to Find 10 Best Radio Access Demos
BT and Lime Microsystems invite all backers of the LimeSDR, LimeNET and LimeSDR Mini campaigns to enter a competition to find the best 10 radio access demos. Read the full update.
Platform Vision and App Store
In this latest video, Ebrahim outlines the vision for the LimeSDR platform and its role in democratising wireless innovation. Read the full update.
LMS8001 Companion and LimeSDR Mini
Be sure to check out the limited edition companion board that extends LimeSDR's range to 10 GHz and the new sibling to the LimeSDR - the LimeSDR Mini. Read the full update.
USB Boards Now in Stock!
LimeSDR USB boards are now in stock. The PCIe boards are expected to be in stock by the end of this week. Read the full update.
GPIO Board and Hacker Case
We are pleased to announce two new accessories for the LimeSDR: the GPIO Board and Hacker Case. Read the full update.
Clearing the Order Backlog and Bringing LimeSDR into Stock
We're about to ship the batch of LimeSDR boards that will finally make them generally available for in-stock purchase! Read the full update.
Incoming LimeSDRs with Aluminum Kits
Per our previous update, we should be delivering the LimeSDRs with Aluminium Kits to our backers now! We have the units here with us and are going through the assembly and test. Read the full update.
Next Batch of Boards and Aluminium Cases
While we have delivered most of the LimeSDR boards to our backers, there is presently a shortfall of few hundred boards. Of particular significance, we are very late with the delivery of the boards with the aluminium casing. We are working hard to address these issues, by manufacturing the boards now in batches of 1,000 units and we have already begun working with higher volume suppliers for the delivery of aluminium casing. Read the full update.
Special Offer on LimeSDR-compatible Computer
As a token of appreciation to our early LimeSDR backers, we’re making available for a limited time the bare (i.e., without integrated LimeSDR) version of the LimeNET Mini computer at a $400 discount off its standard campaign price. Read the full update.
BT and EE LimeSDR Hackathon and LimeNET Launch
BT / EE are sponsoring a LimeSDR hackathon, the latest batch of LimeSDRs is en route from the factory, and the new LimeNET campaign has just launched! Read the full update.
Ubuntu App Store Progress
Two Ubuntu app stores are now live, OS images are on the way, and more! Read the full update.
Digital GPS Signal Repeater System
We are thrilled to see that commercial applications based upon LimeSDR are already being developed. Read the full update.
$1 Million and 1,000 More LimeSDRs
We’d like to thank everyone for the support they’ve given us in becoming Crowd Supply’s most successful project. Breaking the $1 million dollar mark is a nice reminder of how far the LimeSDR community has come. Read the full update.
Work on a LimeSDR Project with Google Summer of Code
For those unfamiliar with Google Summer of Code, it is described as "a global program focused on introducing students to open source software development. Students work on a 3 month programming project with an open source organization during their break from university." Read the full update.
PCIe, Aluminium Cases, and HF Mod
We are pleased to be able to report that the LimeSDR-PCIe boards are now with us, are being put through final testing and will be shipped out to Crowd Supply tomorrow. Read the full update.
Optimising Performance on HF
In this update, we describe how to use a LimeSDR on HF bands (<30 MHz) and what modifications we can perform on your board to do so before shipping to you. Be sure to take the survey mentioned later in this update if you're interested in HF! Read the full update.
The Next 1,000 LimeSDR Boards
We have now packed another 1,000 units ready to go out to backers. The manufacturing and production test has been fully optimised and as Ebrahim mentioned in his message last week, we have now established reliable, high quality volume manufacture for LimeSDR-USB. All the accessories, including the antennas, cables and acrylic cases have already been sent to Crowd Supply, ready to be shipped out along with boards to our backers. Read the full update.
A Message from Ebrahim
With the first batch of boards on their way out to backers now seemed like a great time to thank our partners and the software-defined radio pioneers, who together with everyone who backed the campaign have helped to make LimeSDR possible. As such here’s a short video from Ebrahim Bushehri, CEO of Lime Micro and founder of Myriad-RF. Read the full update.
Shipping Will Start in 24 Hours
The first batch of LimeSDRs and accessories has arrived safely at the Crowd Supply warehouse. Read the full update.
First 500 boards, rocket trajectory simulation, MATLAB support and an FM transmitter
We are pleased to be able to report that the first 500 boards have been manufactured and put through automated testing. All that remains now is for manual testing of a random sample, before they are shipped off to Crowd Supply and from there out to our backers and developers. Read the full update.
Manufacturing, Limited Edition LMS7002, GPS Simulation and a 3D Printed Case
Our ODM manufacturer has completed the manufacturing test runs on the final version of the LimeSDR boards, and here is a short video showing the pick and place part of the process. Read the full update.
Manufacturing Update #3
We are delighted to be able to confirm that all 2,500 Altera FPGA chips have arrived at our UK headquarters and are ready to be shipped with various other parts to our ODM in Taiwan. Read the full update.
Manufacturing Update #2
We have been busy building the inventory of components and parts for assembly of the LimeSDR boards. As mentioned in our previous manufacturing update, we have been working with our suppliers to expedite the delivery of the long-lead-time components: the FPGA and crucially, the TCXO. Read the full update.
Over The Air, pyLMS7002M Python package and VNA example
Last week saw the first post go up on Myriad-RF in a new fortnightly series entitled, Over The Air — a round-up of interesting and newsworthy developments in the wider community. Read the full update.
SPI Speed Optimisation, LuaRadio and Arch Linux
The engineering team are constantly striving to improve the overall performance and user experience of the LimeSDR platform, and in a blog post this week over on Myriad-RF, Andrew takes a look at a change in the way that SPI programming of the LMS7002M FPRF transceiver is handled, which has resulted in much faster read and write operations. Read the full update.
Manufacturing Update
We now have most of the components with our assembly house in Taiwan. We are waiting for the long lead items and working closely with our suppliers to expedite the delivery. The key components are the Altera Cyclone IV FPGA and Rakon TCXO. Read the full update.
Snap Packages for LimeSDR
In a new post up on the Myriad-RF blog Josh Blum introduces the snap packaging format and takes us through the basics of creating, building and installing snaps. Read the full update.
Production Progress
Since the successful close of our funding campaign, We've been incredibly busy preparing to deliver LimeSDRs to all our backers. Just as we worked hard during the campaign - internally, with key partners, and with our fantastic beta testers in the community — creating a series of exciting demos, we continue to work to ensure backers will have a first-class experience upon receiving their hardware. In this update, we'll review the state of the production schedule, hardware design, testing setup, documentation, app store, and more. Read the full update.
Digital Design Competition Winner Announced
We’re delighted to announce that Charles Brain is the winner of our digital design competition, with a proposal to build an FPGA-based RF channel simulator. Read the full update.
Second Design Competition
Encouraged by the strength of proposals in the LimeSDR early access competition and keen to see what projects the community might build that make use of the FPGA, we’ve decided to run a second competition where this time the focus is putting the LimeSDR’s Altera Cyclone IV to good use. Read the full update.
Limited Edition Chip Logo
We are excited to announce that, as part of a manufacturing agreement with ASE Group -- the company that packages the LMS7002M transceiver IC -- all boards pledged during the campaign and any purchased before September 30th will have an ‘I Backed LimeSDR on Crowd Supply’ logo on top of the chip. Read the full update.
Competition Winners Announced!
The competition drew to a close last week and I have to say that judging has not been easy, on account of there being no shortage of great entries, with many more proposals for uses that we’d really love to support than boards we have available at this point in time. Read the full update.
Additional LimeSDR Prize Being Made Available
Due to so many excellent competition submissions, there will now be two winners. Read the full update.
Project Competition
Announcing a competition to receive an early (by end of August!) LimeSDR. Read the full update.
Update USB Connector
There's one week left for crowdfunding pledges to change their USB connector. Read the full update.
Highlights from the LimeSDR Beta Testing Community
Since successfully reaching our goal (we are still really happy about that so thank you!), we have continued to beaver away behind the scenes. Read the full update.
LimeSDR Enterprise Certification
Today we are excited to announce that we have launched a new enterprise initiative for LimeSDR. Read the full update.
Campaign Successfully Ended!
The campaign has officially ended! We just wanted to say again a massive thank you to our amazing backers. The LimeSDR campaign has gone way beyond our expectations. Read the full update.
We've Made It!
Firstly, a HUGE thank you to all our backers. With your support we have hit 100% of our campaign target and are now on our way to making our vision of democratising wireless communication a reality. Right from the beginning of the campaign we have been blown away by the support and excitement from you, the community. Again - Thank you. We could not have done this without you! Read the full update.
FFT Demo Using SoapyRemote
In this video Andrew picks up where he left off with his blog post on building a remote radio head using LimeSDR, going on to show it being used to stream samples across the network to a laptop Read the full update.
GPS Receiver Demo and App Store Announcement
In a previous update Danny Webster, Principal RF Design Engineer at Lime Micro, demonstrated the open source GNU Octave software being used to both generate and plot WCDMA cellular (3G) signals. Read the full update.
GSM Base Station Demo
The latest demo that we have to share with you comes courtesy of Alexander Chemeris, CEO of Fairwaves, a company with many years experience building and deploying open source GSM network solutions. Read the full update.
Fantastic Progress and a Look to the Future!
It's the Friday before the final few days of the campaign, we hit 80% funding and $400,000 earlier today, and we're still some way to go but it certainly feels like we can make it. As such, now seems like a great time to look back at achievements so far, with a look also towards the future. Read the full update.
Building a LimeSDR Remote Radio Head
In a new post up on the Myriad-RF blog, Andrew takes us through the hardware build for a remote radio head, which is to say a system that integrates RF and digital converters etc. that is used together with a second networked, remote system which then runs the actual SDR application. Read the full update.
Alpha Testing Program and Extended Campaign Pricing
First, thanks to everyone who has supported us so far. We're in the final week of the campaign and over three quarters the way to our funding goal! We're well within reach of the goal, but we'll need your help. The funding goal wasn't arbitrary - if we don't reach it, then the project will be put on hold, none of your credit cards will be charged, and no one will get a LimeSDR. Community-driven free and open source hardware projects rely on individuals' support to get off the ground. LimeSDR is no different. If you haven't yet pledged for a LimeSDR, please do! if you have, please help spread the word far and wide to everyone you know, be it by social media, email, in-person, or carrier pigeon. Read the full update.
Vector Network Analyser and PiHPSDR
Picking up where we left off yesterday with test and measurement examples, we have one this time from Lime's millimeter wave IC design team, demonstrating LimeSDR being used as a vector network analyzer (VNA). Read the full update.
All-in-One Lab and GNU Octave
All of the example applications that we've shared so far have been demonstrations of one form or another of wireless communications. And, while this is obviously the main use that we had in mind for LimeSDR, it is by no means the only one and it can equally be put to use in many other demanding RF applications that require signal generation and reception or measurement. Read the full update.
Acrylic Case Now Available at Reduced Price
By popular demand, acrylic enclosures for LimeSDR are now available for separate purchase at a reduced price of $99. Read the full update.
LTE Demo with LimeSDR and OpenAirInterface
The OpenAirInterface Software Alliance are working towards the development of a 5G cellular stack that will run on commercial off-the- shelf (COTS) hardware, and they already have a functioning 4G (LTE) implementation that runs on a commodity Intel platform equipped with SDR. Read the full update.
LoRa Transmit, Receive, Relay and Simulation!
Over the past few weeks we've shown how LimeSDR can be used with numerous different applications and wireless systems, and what better way to round off the week than with news that Josh has succeeded in putting together a series of Pothos-based examples for LoRa™ modulation. Read the full update.
RC Mains Switch and Dual System Examples
While it's great that you can use LimeSDR with new wireless systems such as Bluetooth Low Energy, along with wideband ones such as HDTV broadcast, there are tons of applications that use really simple narrowband wireless systems for remote control and sensing. Read the full update.
LimeSDR-PCIe Design and General Availability
In a new post up on the Myriad-RF blog, Andrew announces the availability of the design and manufacturing files, plus FPGA project files, for the PCIe variant of LimeSDR. Read the full update.
LMS7002M Documentation Added to Myriad-RF Wiki
A few weeks ago Gareth Halfacree introduced the LimeSDR User Guide which had just been added to the wiki, and since then Josh Blum has added documentation for the driver also. The latest addition to the wiki is the datasheet for the LMS7002M Field-Programmable RF (FPRF) transceiver at the heart of the LimeSDR. Read the full update.
HD Digital Video Broadcasting with LimeSDR
It's just incredible what can be achieved today with open source software, thanks to the efforts of a global development community and the principle of “standing on the shoulders of giants”, whereby it's possible to build on the work of others in order to achieve new and even greater things. Read the full update.
Ultimate LimeSDR Front-end Modules Stretch Goal
We've just added a stretch goal to the Ultimate LimeSDR With PCle Interface pledge tier and if this reaches 50 backers, the reward will now also include dual-channel PA and LNA modules, together with a set of eight SAW filters covering TX and RX on bands I, II, V and VII. Read the full update.
Receiving Bluetooth Low Energy
We've published a new video in which Andrew demonstrates how LimeSDR can be used to receive and decode Bluetooth Low Energy. Read the full update.
The LimeSDR Application Ecosystem
In a previous post on the Myriad-RF blog, Josh Blum introduced the driver architecture, describing the various components and APIs that it provides. In a new post he picks up where he left off and takes a look at the LimeSDR application ecosystem that is available to us thanks to this. Read the full update.
EE, the UK's Largest and Most Innovative 4G Operator, Backs LimeSDR
We have some BIG developments. EE, the UK's largest and most innovative 4G deployment, is backing LimeSDR and supporting us to move forward our mission to leapfrog wireless innovation in the UK. Read the full update.
Gqrx Receives Amateur Radio and Weather Satellites
Alexandru Csete takes us through his first experiences with LimeSDR and getting it to work with the popular SDR receiver application, Gqrx. Noting how, thanks to Josh's work on the driver, this was simply a matter of configuring appropriate sample rate and bandwidth settings. Read the full update.
Micro USB Socket Version
You asked for it, we listened, and now we're pleased to be able to offer a version of the LimeSDR board that is equipped with a micro USB 3.0 Type-B socket, instead of a full size Type-A plug. Read the full update.
Wiki Documentation
So if you have great hardware and software support, what comes next? Documentation! Read the full update.
Introducing the Driver Architecture
Having a great hardware platform is one thing, but as any experienced engineer will tell you, this is only half of the story and you also need solid software support to realise the true potential of that hardware. So it's hardly surprising that we've had quite a few backers asking for more details of the driver software for LimeSDR and whether it will support this application or that application. Read the full update.
A Big Thank You!
First, a big thank you to all our backers. With your support, we hit 20% of our campaign target in just over 24 hours and all 500 of the first flock of early bird boards were pledged within 32 hours. This is phenomenal! We have been blown away by the support and excitement from you, our community. Thank you! Read the full update.