[amsat-bb] Re: Icom D-Star

[Tony Langdon]

At 07:33 PM 4/23/2011, you wrote:

>The chips are "readily available" at a few hundred dollars apiece, and
>if you attempt to implement your own AMBE codec then you're going to
>have DVSI's lawyers jumping on you.

More like $20 apiece in small (possible 1 off) quantities.


>Proprietary software has no place in Amateur Radio.

It's hardware with firmware.  So let's throw out all the other 
proprietary bits (processors with embedded code, etc) and go back to 
soldering valves?

The simple fact of the matter was back around 2000 when the D-STAR 
spec was developed, there weren't a lot of choices for how to 
compress speech into 2.4kbps and have FEC.  AND have it available in 
a suitable form for implementation into mobile and handheld 
radios.  While the proprietary codec is a minor inconvenience in some 
situations, it's proved to be no impediment to home brew enhancements 
to D-STAR.  The number of ham developed D-STAR projects is 
significant, so that one chip hasn't proved to be an impediment to 
ham experimentation in practice.

73 de VK3JED / VK3IRL
http://vkradio.com