D-STAR illegal in France

Please visit http://www.rowetel.com/ucasterisk/codec2.html

It is based on his PhD Thesis "Techniques for Harmonic Sinusoidal Coding"...

But he needs sponsorship for his ambitious project - IMHO organizing an amateur radio fund-raising would be a better pastime than supporting this silly petition. AFAIK the AMBE2020 IC used for d* encoding costs abt. 20 US$ - instead I propose donating this money to the codec2 project...

I think the only solution is to develop an own vocoder for keeping our hobby industry independent to "present an opportunity for self-training, intercommunication, and technical investigations".

I'm glad to see more hams not giving a flying fuсk about this DVSI vocoder crap. I really thought I'm the only one with these concerns

vy 73 de
Andreas, DF1PAW

 

In terms of potential, David Rowe, VK5DGR is one of the few guys who can develop a good 2400bit audio vocoder. He's one of the original developers open source Speex VoIP codec, and did his PhD research in codec technology. However, he can't develop Codec2 in a vacuum.

He's gotta pay the bills like all of us, and doesn't have the hundred/thousands of hours needed to fully develop Codec2 without one of two things: money to help pay the bills, or development help. He's looking at Google's Summer of Code as a potential resource of help, however that won't come around til next year.

If any of you speak the C language he could use your hand! At the very least, getting Codec2 to a beta-testing stage would be exciting to say the least! However, it won't happen without community support.

Paypal donations are accepted on his website >>>>> http://www.rowetel.com/ucasterisk/codec2.html#help

WHY?? - Because who'd you rather give $$$$$$ to, a corporate enterprise or a ham who's helping develop something you can edit and expand on yourself...something that has no restrictions whatsoever, a free-as-in-beer (to the ham radio community) vocoder that's not tied to a proprietary hardware platform?

 

You want to know why? Because like all of us, he's gotta work and Codec2 development isn't a cash cow, so it gets worked on when he has time, if he has that time available.

an Open Source 2400 bit vocoder is a "moon shot" in terms of relative difficulty and complexity, and things like that take LOTs of time! (AND why it's important to support its development to get an open-source competitor to AMBE on the market!)

 

Get rid of the proprietary CODEC! SHOULD BE OPEN SOURCE. Even Motorola's Mototrbo is compatible with other radios. This AMBE codec should not be closed source. Only on Icom radios too? What's that? I agree, digital is a great mode, but should be treated like the APRS. At least put a copyright next to it like Bob Bruninga, callsign WB4APR. Mention the Japan radio league. But to be forced to pay licensing fees and the bloated cost of a cheap looking piece of C$#p Icom radio is ridiculous. It goes against hamradio. That's why they need to piratically give the repeaters away. I agree with France.

AE7HF

 

D-Link users have responded! The have declared France illegal in D-Link. France is already illegal in Denmark and Iceland.

 

Whats the big deal?

Moot points IMHO, I would not worry about encryption so much when I have a digital trunking scanner than can pick up DSTAR, along with all the other public safety stuff. I dont believe that the encryption is terribly sophisticated. Not only that aren't amatures not allowed to encrypt thier communications period? What if thier repeaters played an MP3 to ID isnt that a proprietary codec? That would be like saying "Oh well, you can't operate on PSK31 or PACTOR because our government only monitors CW and the data encoding/modulation technique is beyond our understanding, so it must be encryption...". Not sure what there laws are there but I don't imagine they are to far off from our FCC regs. As far as the internet, do they not have any form of echolink, packet radio, winlink or anything like that there, if so that's a pretty raw deal and I would be lobbying to get that thrown out first!

 

FM was a proprietary modulation scheme patented in 1914
SSB was patented in 1915
morse code was developed as part of the proprietary Morse telegraph in 1836

dtmf , 1960

so why not DVSI's AMBE codec?

 

Name them!

 

Hmm. I don't know about other folks but I think I'm even less comfortable with people putting out the begging bowl to fund ham radio development than with paying some firm for their product. Time was when hams developed things for the hobby for free. If something is so complex and hard that the only way to get it done is to pay someone to do it then perhaps that isn't a step in the right direction for the hobby.

Analog voice is good enough for me. It gets the job done, I understand how it works, even my 25 year old radios can use it, and it doesn't take someone months of work to develop it for me.

 

The French are a Pain..in certain matters , but here !!!!......D star is a good business , for Icom..........but it is a very poor Digital system..........with restrictions to FREE Ham usage.
It should be Banned from the market...

CT1EEX

 

You're missing my point. On VHF and above, there is no need to compress voice down to 2400 baud.

Designing a 2400 baud vocoder is like designing a new 3-cylinder engine to put in your commuter car.

A 3-cylinder where a 4-cylinder would be good enough.

Hams should build 4-cylinders, as they fit well in 5 kHz and 25 kHz channels.

 

Here's my take on it.

Ham Radio isn't free. Period. Whether its purchasing a radio, antenna, coax, or even the parts required to build the stuff. So you can't use that as an argument.

Encryption. There is a lot of encryption. PSK is a form of encryption. Morse code is a form of encryption. FM, AM, SSB - its all a form of encryption. The difference is the ability to decode it - which we all need equipment to do - this is just another form.

Replacing FM/AM/SSB/Whatever. Who has actually said that its going to *replace* anything? Has PSK replaced CW? Has SSB replace FM? No, and no-one has said that D-Star is going to replace analogue FM/SSB.

Emergency Comms. You don't need an internet connection to run a D-Star repeater - it'll work just like a regular repeater without it. OK, its more expensive, but then again, newer technologies have always been more expensive. My first flatscreen TV cost me £1500 (probably about $2.5-3k at the time). Does that mean that it wasn't worth it? Does that mean that the technology it used shouldn't be availabe? (And no, it doesn't spew out RF - neither does my new one).

Since when has this hobby had a communist style approach. 'NO, you can't do that - put it down, leave it alone and never touch it again!' Absolute garbage - if everyone did that then we would still be in the dark ages!

We have a choice - remember that concept? Choice? If you do want to use it then great - get a rig/decoder and use it. If you don't want to use it, then don't. Simple. But why should your choice prevent someone elses choice?

I don't do D-Star. I don't know if i will in the future or not, maybe it'll depend on my finances. The same goes for HF - i'm currently borrowing a 706 because I can't afford a HF rig.

de 2E0LDJ (and no, i've not sorted my username out yet! )

 

DS or BS

I live in a small country town miles away from where Icom went out of their way to support D star repeaters etc........... and at the end of the day it is BS in the country bush areas........ sales in this country are nothing to skite about and even when 2nd hand equipment comes up for grabs there is a very small percentage of ops that are interested....... If DS is the future of the hobby then we are in serious trouble and as someone else as stated.. thank goodness I won't be here.

I also believe that if France has a problem then it entitled to block this mode of operation for what ever reason.

 

I think D-Star is a competitor for analog FM and it has to either die or replace analog FM eventually. It doesn't benefit the hobby to have people wanting short distance local QSOs on two incompatible systems. In many places VHF activity is scarce enough without fragmenting it. In city areas 2m is busy and having another system puts the squeeze on existing frequencies. It also stretches limited resources - a repeater group may decide to give up its analog repeater and go D-Star because it can't afford to maintain both, which will annoy those who want to continue using their old radios. That's why it is such a contentious issue. I don't think the proprietory aspect really has much to do with it except as a better argument than "I just don't want it" which is what most people really feel.

It's a bit like the arguments when SSB came on the scene, replacing AM. People didn't want to change then, but they did eventually because they saw that SSB offered many benefits: the elimination of tiresome heterodynes, greater range, higher power due to a lower duty cycle etc.

The difference here is that people obviously aren't convinced that D-Star brings any useful benefits, possibly because there aren't any. If it really offered the kind of improvements that SSB offered over AM, everyone would be willing to ditch their old rigs in order to use it. I think those of us who don't see any need for D-Star are afraid we are having it foisted upon us to the extent that we'll have to accept it as inevitable eventually.

 

http://www.hamradiodeluxe.com/

The most popular ham radio software for windows has a giant PayPal donation button in the upper right of its website.

David Rowe isn't demanding donations, he's asking nicely. He's not on the street corner with a cardboard sign in rags asking for development money!

He's half way done with Codec2 already, without being paid a dime. He's asking nicely for a little extra cash to help pay his room and board so he can refocus more intensely on Codec2 and less on other stuff that pays the bills.

He's *not just asking for cash!*. He's looking for developers to help donate their time and get Codec2 into beta stage.

I'd rather donate cash to a ham who's given half his stuff away for free already so he can complete an awesome product, which he is giving away for free!

Codec2 is/will be FREE to any ham radio operator to use. It just needs a little budge.