Open Source D* replacement

[KC2UGV]

And, it's completely open source: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=3125

David Rowe is also the one who brought us Codec2 with his hard work alongside Bruce Perens (Who is also a maintainer for the Debian Linux distro). I am SO going to jump on one as soon as they are ready to ship!

[N8YX]

Count me in on this if we can get enough area system support.

[K7SGJ]

Looks very interesting. I'll be curious to see how well it's received in the field. Thanks for the find.

[KC9SQR]

I've been following these guys for a while and watching the progress of FreeDV and I've been very impressed... I honestly think this is EXACTLY what is needed for this to take off in amateur radio.. Or really DV in general because it adapts to existing equipment instead of needing an entirely separate radio..

[KC2UGV]

I've been following these guys for a while and watching the progress of FreeDV and I've been very impressed... I honestly think this is EXACTLY what is needed for this to take off in amateur radio.. Or really DV in general because it adapts to existing equipment instead of needing an entirely separate radio..

Exactly, and this is what the D* fanatics can't seem to get into their heads: Requiring a hardware chip isn't the answer, especially one that is single-sourced.

[W2NAP]

Exactly, and this is what the D* fanatics can't seem to get into their heads: Requiring a hardware chip isn't the answer, especially one that is single-sourced.

A+

Quite frank if I am going to have to buy a "new" rig to do some digital, forget icom ill go mototrbo

[K0RGR]

There was an announcement prior to Hamvention that there would be a group presenting there that has reverse engineered the AMBE vocoder, opening the possibility that you could have a radio that would do mutliple DV modes - DSTAR, P25, and FreeDV, and potentially others. I think this is what is really needed - instead of trying to clobber one established faction with another protocol - the Japanese business model - you make it possible for everyone to play everywhere.

[KC2UGV]

There was an announcement prior to Hamvention that there would be a group presenting there that has reverse engineered the AMBE vocoder, opening the possibility that you could have a radio that would do mutliple DV modes - DSTAR, P25, and FreeDV, and potentially others. I think this is what is really needed - instead of trying to clobber one established faction with another protocol - the Japanese business model - you make it possible for everyone to play everywhere.

The problem with that is once you reverse engineer a patented item, you open yourself up to lawsuits. So, the unencumbered route is the way that was picked for FreeDV.

[AE5CP]

I think we will quickly see ourselves in a similar debate to VHS vs BETA and BluRay VS HDDVD. I think Icom will wind up being the Sony of the radio world since they have sunk millions into this on a bet.

Icom should have been careful choosing a licensed codec, and then leading thousands of (richer than me) hams into buying all those handhelds and mobile radios when the majority of digital voice users wind up on a free and open sourced codec.

[KC2UGV]

I think we will quickly see ourselves in a similar debate to VHS vs BETA and BluRay VS HDDVD. I think Icom will wind up being the Sony of the radio world since they have sunk millions into this on a bet.

Icom should have been careful choosing a licensed codec, and then leading thousands of (richer than me) hams into buying all those handhelds and mobile radios when the majority of digital voice users wind up on a free and open sourced codec.

Well, the good news in all of this, is the D* radios will be able to do both D* and FreeDV with this mic...

[XE1/N5AL]

If FreeDV takes off, it seems to me that Icom still has their bases covered. You just take out the old Icom CODEC PCB and pop in a new one. They would rake in the bucks on a big round of "upgrade" sales.

[AE5CP]

Even in the HT's?
I thought the dstar modules were not swappable in the newer radios.

But then again, I only own one icom radio and it was a hand-me-down v8000 that knows nothing about digital.
This looks to be like the round of radios that gets sold at all the hamfests that never got the "tone board" for use in modern (even 1992!) repeater systems.
I'd love to put number tags on the old handheld radios that I see at these hamfests to see how much they recirculate from year to year, kinda like tagging the wildlife.

That makes me wonder if we should also put water soluble tags on the attendees of the ham fests to see how many of them actually take showers.

[XE1/N5AL]

You might be right on some of the DStar handhelds. I was thinking about the DStar option boards that they sell with their other radios.

[KC2UGV]

No need to swap out a board. This unit is built into the mic. So, just buy a new hand mic.

[AC6AT]

I'm sincerely impressed that somebody is finally producing a plug-and-play DV mike. But have they figured out a way to make DV not sound like absolute shit yet? None of the Codec2/FreeDV demos I've heard are very encouraging.