What no D-Star blogs?

What you haven’t seen me blog about in a while is D-Star.

I have kind of lost interest.

What got me interested in D-Star was the opens source software projects and node adapters, allowing you to roll your own.

I had always hoped there would be a SIP translation that would take off.  Allowing D-Star to inter-operate with ordinary VOIP.  A powerful idea for Emergency Communications.

One key component to this would be AMBE transcoding at the repeater using a DV dongle or some sort of public AMBE proxy.  This would also allow people to try D-Star using just a computer and microphone or smart phone.

This never really happened.  The Trust Server guys kinda put the kibash on that.

I had hope that with IRCDDB that the trust server concept would go away (fully) and the network would become more decentralized from a select few controlling the whole parade.

So I paid attention to Codec2.  It was being designed as a drop in replacement for AMBE.  (The existing repeater hardware would be able to pass it.)

What I envision(ed) is plugging a  micro computer like the Raspberry Pi into the back of  the Yeasu in your car.  A separate speaker mic hooked to the Pi, which encodes  your voice to Codec2, and wraps that in the sound card created GMSK stream that drives the packet/discriminator connection of  your existing mobile:

Kristoff ON1ARF, demos the concept:



However at this point, the Codec2 part still isn’t quite a drop in replacement from my understanding.  So it’s incompatible with existing repeater infrastructure.

So combine that with the Trust Server regime, and crap repeater hardware, 1980’s retarded data throughput, and D-Star toys attitude by other controlling interests, and I have hit the end of the road with it.

However it has been interesting to learn about and monkey with.