tedyapo/serial-port-sdr

The 'serial-port-sdr' project is a classic hardware 'hack' rather than a viable technology product. It demonstrates the ability to use the RTS/DTR lines or the data stream of a serial port as a makeshift ADC/DAC for radio signals. With only 80 stars and no activity for over 7 years (2691 days), it is essentially a frozen artifact of hobbyist experimentation. From a competitive standpoint, the defensibility is minimal (Score: 2). The approach is easily reproducible by any firmware engineer and relies on hardware (RS-232) that is increasingly rare on modern machines without USB adapters. It has been entirely superseded by low-cost SDR hardware like the RTL-SDR ($25), which offers MHz of bandwidth compared to the kHz range possible via a serial port. Frontier labs have zero interest in this space as it solves a problem (low-cost signal acquisition) that has already been solved more effectively by dedicated silicon. The displacement horizon is '6 months' only in the sense that any modern alternative (including sound-card SDR or cheap specialized dongles) is already a superior choice. This project remains relevant only as a pedagogical reference for how to abuse standard I/O for signal processing.