DStar

I'm getting a Yahoo group off the ground for DStar users in the Central and Northern NJ area.  Feel free to stop by and share your thoughts.  Soon to be released!! the "DStar Users 'Martian to English' translator"!!!

NJNYDStar

 

Whats the D stand for? Death? Get it D-Star.

 

Well, the Empire did have one hell of a parabolic on that mobile...

 

Why bother with a proprietary Japanese mode when P25 is the American standard of the industry? Are you trying to lock out users of commercial gear or go "secure" so the guys with scanners can't hear you?

Some people just don't know about VHF/UHF digital comms I suppose.

"Soon to be released!! the "DStar Users 'Martian to English' translator"!!!"

I SAID D-Star is Japanese!

 

While D-Star is indeed a japanese invention it is not proprietary, anyone can build a D-Star capable rig, the only licence issue is that for the voice codec icom has picked for their radios but from what I can tell of the D-Star discription D-Star is not limited to one codec, you can use the same codec as used in P25.

The one thing P25 is lacking and D-Star has is a routing system, and no it doesn´t need internet to route, 10ghz links work just fine.

 

"but from what I can tell of the D-Star description D-Star is not limited to one codec, you can use the same codec as used in P25."

Whaaaaat?

 

D-STAR is an open protocol – although it is published by JARL, it is available to be implemented by anyone. (For definitions and explanations of terms, there is a glossary on page 6.) While Icom is the only company to date that manufactures D-STAR-compatible radios, any equipment or software that supports the D-STAR protocol will work with a D-STAR system. D-STAR systems can be built using both commercial and homebrew equipment and software.

In a D-STAR system, the air link portion of the protocol applies to signals travelling between radios or between a radio and a repeater. D-STAR radios can talk directly to each other without any intermediate equipment or through a repeater using D-STAR voice or data transceivers. The gateway portion of the protocol applies to the digital interface between D-STAR repeaters (see figure 1). D-STAR also specifies how a voice signal is converted to and from streams of digital data, a function called a codec. The D-STAR codec is known as AMBE® (Advanced Multi-Band Excitation) and the voice signal is transmitted in the D-STAR system at 3600 bits/second (3.6 kbps).