Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

"Yeti" wrote in message
...
On 24/09/2010 17:22, Brian Reay wrote:

Amateur radio has many facets, DStar is simply one of them. Why can't
people
be left to enjoy their pet facets while others get on and enjoy theirs?

Because D-Star isn't amateur radio.

There is no experimentation involved, and can't be.


Don't confuse Brian with logic, he has his faith in that choice must be good
no matter who provides it or what their motives are.

Steve Terry
--
"I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena
without having guns pointed at me.
I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it."
- Wilhelm Reich, November 1947

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

Yeti wrote:
I don't have the skills, or even the time, to take part - but it doesn't
stop me from encouraging the project as a matter of principal. A closed
codec has no place in Amateur Radio.

It is striking how many of the proponents of development of an open codec
and opponents of a closed codec are amongst those that do not have any
idea how to develop a codec...

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

"Rob" wrote in message
...
Yeti wrote:
I don't have the skills, or even the time, to take part - but it doesn't
stop me from encouraging the project as a matter of principal. A closed
codec has no place in Amateur Radio.

It is striking how many of the proponents of development of an open codec
and opponents of a closed codec are amongst those that do not have any
idea how to develop a codec...


ROTFL

Or have even contributed to the development fund. (It was recently reported
by a contributor to uk.radio.amateur that he was the first person to have
sent a donation. (Stands by for the latest excuse from one of our Scottish
amateurs as to why he can't cough up YETI again this month.) )

Personally, I don't see the attraction of DStar like systems, regardless of
the choice of CODEC. However, I'm more than happy for others to enjoy them.
I just wish the bleating crew would go and make this open CODEC happen.

--

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

Brian Morrison wrote:
On 25 Sep 2010 07:06:03 GMT
Rob wrote:

Yeti wrote:
I don't have the skills, or even the time, to take part - but it doesn't
stop me from encouraging the project as a matter of principal. A closed
codec has no place in Amateur Radio.

It is striking how many of the proponents of development of an open codec
and opponents of a closed codec are amongst those that do not have any
idea how to develop a codec...

The skills required to do the job are few and far between. The
community of people who can do good DSP design and coding is small.

Not only that (I have done DSP coding for filters and modems myself),
but in this case there is the additional difficulty of finding the methods
and algorithms to code speech into very few bits. This requires lots of
knowledge and research, and what is already known is usually patented.
Often the research is done partly in a scientific research institute
or at a university, and partly in a commercial company allied to such
an institute. Lots of man-hours of highly qualified people go into this.

But the community of people who think that "WE should develop an
open codec" and "when we had more donations we could..." seems to be
thinking that this is project that a couple of amateurs could do better.

We should develop an open space rocket to propel our geostationary OSCAR
into space. Sure.

But we better admit that we cannot do that and set achievable goals.

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

Rob wrote:


We should develop an open space rocket to propel our geostationary OSCAR
into space. Sure.

But we better admit that we cannot do that and set achievable goals.

Straw man.


Spike

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

On 25/09/2010 08:06, Rob wrote:
wrote:
I don't have the skills, or even the time, to take part - but it doesn't
stop me from encouraging the project as a matter of principal. A closed
codec has no place in Amateur Radio.

It is striking how many of the proponents of development of an open codec
and opponents of a closed codec are amongst those that do not have any
idea how to develop a codec...

I don't know to build a nuclear power station either - doesn't stop me
being in favour of them over wind power.

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

On 25/09/2010 08:32, Brian Reay wrote:
wrote in message
...
wrote:
I don't have the skills, or even the time, to take part - but it doesn't
stop me from encouraging the project as a matter of principal. A closed
codec has no place in Amateur Radio.

It is striking how many of the proponents of development of an open codec
and opponents of a closed codec are amongst those that do not have any
idea how to develop a codec...


ROTFL

Or have even contributed to the development fund. (It was recently reported
by a contributor to uk.radio.amateur that he was the first person to have
sent a donation. (Stands by for the latest excuse from one of our Scottish
amateurs as to why he can't cough up YETI again this month.) )

Actually, I can this month. Someone remind me who I send it to please!

Can't afford it next month cos the RSGB want their fees off me then, and
I'll be on holiday for at least a week of it too - so I'd better get it
done now.

Personally, I don't see the attraction of DStar like systems, regardless of
the choice of CODEC. However, I'm more than happy for others to enjoy them.
I just wish the bleating crew would go and make this open CODEC happen.


Didn't you read the first post? It's happening!

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

On 25/09/2010 11:04, Rob wrote:

We should develop an open space rocket to propel our geostationary OSCAR
into space. Sure.

A Geostationary OSCAR - what a terrible idea!

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

On 25/09/2010 11:55, Brian Morrison wrote:
On 25 Sep 2010 10:04:41 GMT
wrote:

Brian wrote:
On 25 Sep 2010 07:06:03 GMT
wrote:

wrote:
I don't have the skills, or even the time, to take part - but it doesn't
stop me from encouraging the project as a matter of principal. A closed
codec has no place in Amateur Radio.

It is striking how many of the proponents of development of an open codec
and opponents of a closed codec are amongst those that do not have any
idea how to develop a codec...

The skills required to do the job are few and far between. The
community of people who can do good DSP design and coding is small.

Not only that (I have done DSP coding for filters and modems myself),
but in this case there is the additional difficulty of finding the methods
and algorithms to code speech into very few bits. This requires lots of
knowledge and research, and what is already known is usually patented.
Often the research is done partly in a scientific research institute
or at a university, and partly in a commercial company allied to such
an institute. Lots of man-hours of highly qualified people go into this.

Very true, we are fortunate that David Rowe already had the knowledge
and background to do this, and was available to do the work. Others can
assist, but I think they did not have the time required.


But the community of people who think that "WE should develop an
open codec" and "when we had more donations we could..." seems to be
thinking that this is project that a couple of amateurs could do better.

I've never thought that, I knew that the only solution was an amateur
who was also knowledgeable and experienced in the techniques needed.


We should develop an open space rocket to propel our geostationary OSCAR
into space. Sure.

Don't think rockets are patented, just seriously expensive.


But we better admit that we cannot do that and set achievable goals.

I think Codec2 is achievable, but I certainly agree that a
geostationary OSCAR is asking a great deal, getting it there is one
thing, keeping it there and monitoring it and keeping it healthy is
quite another.


More importantly, keeping it useable, and free from abuse will be
impossible. (Ref: US SATCOM on 255.550 downlink, widely pirated by half
of Brazil)

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

"Brian Reay" wrote in message
...
"Rob" wrote in message
...
snip
If the open CODEC happens, their scope to "experiment" with it will be
limited- unless they only want to talk to themselves or with others
they've co-ordinated experiments with.
73
Brian G8OSN/W8OSN


Except for the scope to experiment, you have just described D-Star.

Steve Terry
--
"I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena
without having guns pointed at me.
I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it."
- Wilhelm Reich, November 1947

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

appears to have no flexibility to do this and there are no version
fields in the frame structure so it can't be made backwards compatible.
The design ought to have had this built in, but seems not to have
considered doing it.

The exact same stupidity has long crippled the advancement of the
AX.25 protocol, and the APRS protocol, and nearly every other *amateur*
designed protocol.

Worse, AX.25 was coded into law (in the USA, and elsewhere), thus
preventing any other air protocols from even having a chance because
they could not be used, or used unattended, such as a BBS.

D*Star apparently has the same problem - it's a lot like commercial P25
(or MotoTRBO), but it's a lot different too, and there's really no way
to fix that.

And how about all those surplus TETRA radios? Yah, the USA can't currently
use TETRA for commercial/industrial radio, but the rest of the world does
and there's nothing stopping USA hams from doing so.

I sure would like to see someone make an off-the-shelf digital voice ham
radio that made use of openly-available codecs, especially if they were
flashable.

AX.25's other remaining use, that of carrying tcp/ip, has also got a
real problem: the minimum IPv6 packet is bigger than the maximum AX.25
packet. Oops.
- Brian

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

Brian Kantor wrote:
The exact same stupidity has long crippled the advancement of the
AX.25 protocol, and the APRS protocol, and nearly every other *amateur*
designed protocol.

Fortunately there were a couple of unused bits in the AX.25 header
that were used for AX.25 v2, DAMA, and Extended Sequence numbers.
But more flexibility would certainly have been welcome.

AX.25's other remaining use, that of carrying tcp/ip, has also got a
real problem: the minimum IPv6 packet is bigger than the maximum AX.25
packet. Oops.

There is a segmentation protocol at AX.25 level (defined by Phil Karn
and used in NET/NOS) that allows the segmentation of a single IP datagram
over multiple AX.25 frames.

With a new PID it could be used for IPv6 over AX.25.

Of course, the headers of IPv4 are already considered big in the
amateur packet radio world. At the datarates typically used, one
wants to conserve on header size.

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

Rob wrote:
Of course, the headers of IPv4 are already considered big in the
amateur packet radio world. At the datarates typically used, one
wants to conserve on header size.

Yes, some have tried using Van Jacobsen header prediction to cut down
on the size of the actual transmitted header - a rather nice solution,
but not really workable in a lossy datagram world.

So far the best method seems to be (using a separate pid) an adaptation
of the SLIP with compression and header prediction over a connected-mode
(i.e, reliable stream). This adds packet framing and reduces the overhead
a bit, and at 9600 bps or faster, is actually slightly faster than a
carrier pigeon. It also places the burden of retries on the air link
where it belongs, rather than end-to-end, which is clearly the wrong
place to do it.

A number of F-S-U folks have been doing some very interesting work in
real high-speed packet (230 kb/s or faster, some multi-Mb/s), and
such links would easily support digital voice without much need for
super-bandwidth-conserving codecs.

GSM and similar codecs are now easily available in software
implementations; these work quite well at an air rate of 9600 or
sometimes less. Some are free of significant encumbrances that
would hinder widespread usage.

In the land mobile radio regime, the ultimate goal is to reduce the
consumed bandwidth so as to stack more customers in the same band.
Hams have no such need; if anything we have (shhh!) more bandwidth than
we need on the VHF and up bands, so using extremely narrowband codecs
just isn't something we need to do.
- Brian

Codec2 - putting your money where your mouth is
 

In message , Yeti
writes
On 25/09/2010 11:04, Rob wrote:

We should develop an open space rocket to propel our geostationary OSCAR
into space. Sure.

A Geostationary OSCAR - what a terrible idea!

With enough power and weak signal modes you can use the geostationary
broadcast satellites as passive reflectors .

DIJ
--
Brian Howie

I just don't like D STAR and I don't LIKE ICOM

I
Can
Only
Monitor

D Star is nothing but a copy cat attempt to try to make amateur radio more like public service.

In the hills of western Pennsylvania, it does not work! Period!

Maybe if all your emergencies were within 5 miles of the repeater, and everything was wiped off the face of the earth, except your D Star Repeater, it might work. But that does not happen in the real world.

Please, let D Star die a death of natural causes.
It has no place in amateur radio, except for the LIDS who wants to be different. Does it have interoptibility - NO, if your transceiver is analog - you are SOL - so why use it?

Once people progresses beyond the stage of 2 meters, playing around with walkie talkies, and moves up to HF, the thought of wanting to go back to two meters is almost ludrichrist for anything other then doing local ecomm work.