On Thu, 22 May 2008 19:50:32 EDT, (Mark Kramer)
wrote:

PSK31 has a huge advantage in that it is
pretty cheap, and not proprietary. D-Star is decidedly not cheap, and is
quite proprietary.

No, D-Star is not proprietary. It is an open standard.


Not proprietary? How can I get my Yaesu to work with it?

On Sun, 25 May 2008 07:56:17 EDT, Buck
wrote:

No, D-Star is not proprietary. It is an open standard.

Not proprietary? How can I get my Yaesu to work with it?

Can your Yaesu do single sideband on 440 MHz? Same issue.

Convince Motorola - who now owns Yaesu - to make an adapter. Up to
now, no one has made and sold such things except Icom. It's not like
Pactor III which is in fact proprietary and no one can make adapters
except SGS, the patent-holder.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On 2008-05-26, Phil Kane wrote:
On Sun, 25 May 2008 07:56:17 EDT, Buck
wrote:

No, D-Star is not proprietary. It is an open standard.

Not proprietary? How can I get my Yaesu to work with it?

Can your Yaesu do single sideband on 440 MHz? Same issue.

Yes, just fine thanks.

Convince Motorola - who now owns Yaesu - to make an adapter. Up to
now, no one has made and sold such things except Icom. It's not like
Pactor III which is in fact proprietary and no one can make adapters
except SGS, the patent-holder.

I'd prefer to make one myself, except I'd have to buy an AMBE chip from
DVSI. DVSI, being the patent holders, are the only ones who can make
them (without paying 6-7 figures for the license, and even then only in
hardware). And that seems to me to make it just as proprietary as
Pactor III.


73 de GM4FH
Alexander Hamilton

In article ,
Derry Hamilton wrote:
I'd prefer to make one myself, except I'd have to buy an AMBE chip from
DVSI.

I'd like to make a lot of things for myself but I have to buy patented
chips from the license holders. AM radio isn't a proprietary protocol,
but a lot of the parts used to make an AM radio are patented. You buy
them only from people the licensee has approved.

Mark Kramer wrote:
In article ,
Derry Hamilton wrote:
I'd prefer to make one myself, except I'd have to buy an AMBE chip from
DVSI.

I'd like to make a lot of things for myself but I have to buy patented
chips from the license holders. AM radio isn't a proprietary protocol,
but a lot of the parts used to make an AM radio are patented. You buy
them only from people the licensee has approved.

Hi Mark,

Could you elaborate on the relationship of electronic parts to
proprietary codecs for radios?


I think there is a little confusion here regarding proprietary aspects
of electronics and radio concepts.

Any patents held on electronic components are patents to safeguard the
makers methods of making them - not the concept of the parts. The
resistors, diodes and other parts are basic electronic building blocks,
and anyone can make those.

I could make a nicely functioning radio out of pencils, microscope
slides, aluminum foil, scrap wire, an old oatmeal box, and If I really
wanted to get involved, I could construct my own vacuum tubes and design
and build a superheterodyne radio.

As long as I built them according to my own methods, and did not
infringe on the methods used by a manufacturer, not one patent, nor
intellectual property would be violated.

Another way of looking at this, is that I can go to the local Radio
Shack, and buy a handful of components to build say, a blinking light.
Maybe an IC-type 555, an op amp or two, and their needed peripheral parts.

My finished device is not owned by the companies that made the parts. If
it is my original design, I can claim copyright on it.

Now on to the intellectual property of the D-Star codec.

D-Star uses this Codec, and it is proprietary.

If you do not use the Codec, you will not be able to use the D-Star
repeater.

If you can use the repeater, you have the Codec.


This differs in many important ways from normal repeaters, and normal
Codecs in use by Amateurs.

Examples of non proprietary Codecs are(randomoly picked except for D-Star:

SPEEX- lossy but good ro IRLP

FLAC - lossless


Proprietary codecs:

AMBE

The D Star Codec.

The ramifications of using each are important.


Amateur Radio has traditionally used open source whenever possible,
because we also have a tradition of working on and improving those
things that we work with. Examples are the PSK31 and RTTY modes.
Amateurs are continually providing new and improved software for those.
There are even multi PSK channel data transmission softwares out there.
A lot of PSK signals fit within the bandwidth taken up by one SSB voice
transmission.

My experimenting with a particular PSK engine is usually based on going
to the web, and downloading it. Most applications are free, but even
those that have to be purchased, the whole sum is going to the developer.

Hypothetically, say a group of hams came up with a digital repeater
using the SPEEX Codec. (SPEEX is used for illustration purposes only, it
might not be the best choice)

Most of us would be able to either build or purchase an interface that
would allow us to interface our radios to the computer, as software
would be easily available to run them.

Hand helds would be easily adaptable, as there is no specific need for a
computer, just the necessary software and hardware to turn an audio
stream into a digital stream, in the same manner as cell phones do (they
use a different codec, but the principle is the same.

I would note that there has not been a huge amount of work done by
Amateurs in the VHF and up region as related to Digital voice. A lot of
this can be ascribed to the fact that an SSB channel is already pretty
narrow, so there aren't orders of magnitude gains to be made in
conserving bandwidth. Another issue is that with digital signals,
multipath can be a severe problem. Anyone who does doppler direction
finding (I do) can tell you that at VHF and up, Multipath is a major
problem. What might be a little whoosh or garble on FM without upsetting
readability can sometimes just keep the digital system nice and quiet.

Now let us turn to our D-Star equipped repeater.

What will communicate with it:

Icom D-Star Equipment
Kenwood ( a rebranded Icom, sold only in Japan
Moetronix Can hear and talk D-Star on the internet.

That is a pretty short list. One for all practical purposes You buy the
equipment and you use it.

Do you know what the price for the AMBE Chip is in quantities of one? It
may not even be realistic for an amateur to attempt to build one of
their own.

Mike

On Tue, 27 May 2008 19:38:13 EDT, Michael Coslo wrote:

Now let us turn to our D-Star equipped repeater.

What will communicate with it:

Icom D-Star Equipment
Kenwood ( a rebranded Icom, sold only in Japan
Moetronix Can hear and talk D-Star on the internet.

That is a pretty short list. One for all practical purposes You buy the
equipment and you use it.

The "leadership" of our ARES/RACES group are D-Star fanatics. They
claim, though, that the ICOM equipment does have an FM mode to pass FM
signals through. I have no idea how that works (dual detection
channels?).

As I understood it, D-Star is a set of open protocols generated by
individuals in the Japan Radio Club (or whatever the formal name is)
and ICOM was the only one so far to implement them in hardware. If
someone else wants to implement them, a good IP lawyer can steer them
in the direction of non-infringement. A good (non-ham) friend of mine
is the IP attorney for Nikon USA and he is always checking to see that
the newest stuff proposed does not infringe patents by Canon and
others, yet digital photography uses open standards that everyone
implements in their own way.

One of our club members is the author of D-Rats (that's Star spelled
backwards), a set of open-source applications for functionality of
D-Star radios. There's nothing proprietary about what he is doing or
its applications, and he comes out with updates weekly. I'm not a
software person so I can't comment on hooks and APIs and such.

Hey, I would be a D-Star "nut" also were the radio fairy to deliver
four dual-band mobiles and an HT on my doorstep one night. We'll
leave the light on for ya'.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

Phil Kane wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2008 19:38:13 EDT, Michael Coslo wrote:

Now let us turn to our D-Star equipped repeater.

What will communicate with it:

Icom D-Star Equipment
Kenwood ( a rebranded Icom, sold only in Japan
Moetronix Can hear and talk D-Star on the internet.

That is a pretty short list. One for all practical purposes You buy the
equipment and you use it.

The "leadership" of our ARES/RACES group are D-Star fanatics. They
claim, though, that the ICOM equipment does have an FM mode to pass FM
signals through. I have no idea how that works (dual detection
channels?).

I've looked to see if such a thing (fm voice) exists within D-Star.
Could these folks steer us to some documentation? Here are the RF
modules I've found:

http://homepage.mac.com/rrucker/d-st...er_modules.pdf

Do you know of any coordination or frequency placement issues involved
with opening a presumptive FM side?

You know that whole D-Star "repeater" is not a repeater issue, so
frequencies are opened up for it in repeater crowded areas. Those
frequencies would not be proper repeater frequencies for an FM repeater.

Do you know a reference for that action Phil? I've looked a bit on the
FCC site, but haven't found it yet. I think it was in 2006.

As I understood it, D-Star is a set of open protocols generated by
individuals in the Japan Radio Club (or whatever the formal name is)
and ICOM was the only one so far to implement them in hardware. If
someone else wants to implement them, a good IP lawyer can steer them
in the direction of non-infringement.

I would really hate to have to hire a lawyer to consult on my
homebrewing... ;^)


A good (non-ham) friend of mine
is the IP attorney for Nikon USA and he is always checking to see that
the newest stuff proposed does not infringe patents by Canon and
others, yet digital photography uses open standards that everyone
implements in their own way.

One of our club members is the author of D-Rats (that's Star spelled
backwards), a set of open-source applications for functionality of
D-Star radios. There's nothing proprietary about what he is doing or
its applications, and he comes out with updates weekly. I'm not a
software person so I can't comment on hooks and APIs and such.


Does he have a website? I'd like to take a look.

Hey, I would be a D-Star "nut" also were the radio fairy to deliver
four dual-band mobiles and an HT on my doorstep one night. We'll
leave the light on for ya'.

I'd be interested in experimenting with it. We just don't have a
digital repeater for a long way around here, and the costs of putting
one up just don't make it happen. It kind of reminds me of the old
credit problem for young people.

Need a loan? You need a good credit rating
Need a good credit rating, you need to get a loan.. 8^)

Like you said, if the radio fairys were to drop a system off... 8^)

In article ,
Michael Coslo wrote:
As long as I built them according to my own methods, and did not
infringe on the methods used by a manufacturer, not one patent, nor
intellectual property would be violated.

Yes, by definition, if you don't infringe, you haven't infringed. You can
build just about anything for personal use and not infringe.

D-Star uses this Codec, and it is proprietary.

The digital voice part of D-Star uses a codec. The rest does not. The
protocol is open and published. Certain parts used to implement the
protocol are patented and sold only by a single source. When 741s were
new, they were expensive and sole-sourced.

If you do not use the Codec, you will not be able to use the D-Star
repeater.

I'm not sure you are correct about that.

This differs in many important ways from normal repeaters, and normal
Codecs in use by Amateurs.

If you don't have an FM radio, you cannot use an FM repeater.

Just as you can build your own copies of patented things for personal
use, as you mentioned earlier, you can build your own copy of an AMBE
codec for personal use. TI won't tell me how to build a 741 IC; AMBE is
under no compulsion to tell you how to build their codec. If you buy one
and reverse engineer it, that's fine -- for personal use.

Amateur Radio has traditionally used open source whenever possible,

Airmail and Winlink 2000 are two very large obvious counterexamples. The
firmware in a KPC3+ another. The firmware in the repeater controller
I had to reverse engineer to make usable, ditto. It is common for ham
applications to run only on Windows -- the epitome of closed source. The
control and programming software from Kenwood for the D700 is -- closed
source windows only. Look around at all the Motorola gear in use in ham
radio. I've yet to see an open-source version of ANY of the programs
required to program a Motorola.

Yes, there is open source for many things. No, it's not always used. The
"tradition" is limited.

Now let us turn to our D-Star equipped repeater.

What will communicate with it:

Icom D-Star Equipment
Kenwood ( a rebranded Icom, sold only in Japan
Moetronix Can hear and talk D-Star on the internet.

That is a pretty short list.

A very incomplete list, I believe. And, at an early stage of development,
not unexpected.

One for all practical purposes You buy the equipment and you use it.

For all practical purposes, 2m and 440 are "you buy the equipment and
you use it". I don't know many people building their own HTs, and even
those that did used the Heathkits. For most commodity ham uses, homebrew
is rare.

Do you know what the price for the AMBE Chip is in quantities of one?

About $200.

It
may not even be realistic for an amateur to attempt to build one of
their own.

The ID-1, last I looked, is $1000. About. The IC-V92AD is about $600.
An SDR is on the order of $1000 and up. A lot of bleeding edge components
are a bit spendy. Ham radio experimentation is a spendy hobby.

On Sun, 25 May 2008 21:41:06 EDT, Phil Kane
wrote:

On Sun, 25 May 2008 07:56:17 EDT, Buck
wrote:

No, D-Star is not proprietary. It is an open standard.

Not proprietary? How can I get my Yaesu to work with it?

Can your Yaesu do single sideband on 440 MHz? Same issue.

It can do all modes!