I've personally seen this.? I've talked
to a number of people of varying ages who have kept mainly to FM,
and while they've dipped their toe into the digital waters, they
have been underwhelmed by what they've found - systems with
restrictions on them, primarily around the vocoder.? There's a lot
of people who want to do the open source thing.? Some are coders
who want to play with the software itself, others simply believe
in the philosophy.? I'm partly the latter, but I'm also a systems
integrator, using open interfaces to combine software together
into new ways, often not considered by the original authors.?
Openness makes my cause much easier, as do standards (I love
USRP!).? Sometimes this also means working with software
developers and testing their efforts, another rewarding activity.
I've told them about M17 and they were all ears - the attraction
was the openness of M17, so much so that one of these people asked
me to provide a M17 bridge to a major network that he is involved
with.? Interestingly, he also found Codec2 more pleasing to his
ears than the *MBE family of codecs.? I find them roughly
equivalent to my ears.? Interestignly, Codec2 3200 transcoded to
AMBE2+ is practically indistinguishable to native AMBE2+ in audio
quality when monitored on a DMR radio.
All:
I thought I¡¯d share this with you, this M17
community of interest.
I had a long conversation with a friend on a
repeater yesterday after I published Zero Retries 0164 and ¡°Why
M17 Is Significant - Part 2¡±.
My friend is the owner of the repeater we were
talking on, and I was mentioning how much excitement I was
seeing about M17, including the debut of the CS7000 M17. He just
didn¡¯t get it - he really didn¡¯t understand that the key feature
of M17 is that it¡¯s open.
I tried to explain that openness of M17 is the
critical feature to the newest generation of Amateur Radio
Operators who are digital / Internet natives, are likely
techies, and many hackers like the ones who will take Amateur
Radio exams this weekend at DEFCON and will become Amateur Radio
Operators whose primary interest in Amateur Radio is to hack on
radio technology.
To my friend, the openness of M17 versus DMR or
D-Star or SF was irrelevant considering that DMR, D-Star, and SF
are well-established, and why did we ¡°need¡± another system?
I really couldn¡¯t explain it to him in a way that
got through to him. He wasn¡¯t convinced, though I¡¯m not sure
that he wanted to be convinced.
A few hours later, the following analogy occurred
to me. I emailed a more terse version of this to him, and I¡¯ll
expand this in next week¡¯s Zero Retries. You¡¯re the first to see
this made public.
¡
M17 versus the status quo of Amateur Radio digital and FM
repeaters is analogous (in my mind) to the computer industry in
1976.
In 1976, mainframes and minis were doing the job
satisfactorily for the computer industry. Everyone that needed
and could afford a computer had one. That¡¯s analogous to the
current repeater technology and the current repeater owners.
But in 1975, one year earlier, microcomputers had
come on the scene. The MITS Altair was unveiled in the January
1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. By 1976 a completely
new crowd entered the ¡°computer industry¡± and were using
these new (and still very imperfect, by mini and mainframe
standards) microcomputers to do computing very differently than
was possible with mainframes and minis.
The microcomputer folks didn¡¯t ask ¡°permission¡± from the
mainframe and mini folks, and they didn¡¯t try to persuade the
mainframe and mini owners that microcomputer were ¡°better¡± and
they should start doing / using microcomputers.
Instead of asking permission or trying to persuade, they just
started doing things their own new way?with
microcomputers and rapidly evolved an entirely different version
of the computer industry.
A decade later, the mainframe and mini computer industry
looked around and said ¡°what happened?!?!?¡± All of the
energy in the computer industry had shifted to microcomputers.
¡
In my opinion, from deep observation of M17 and
trying to explain it and write about it substantively¡
M17 in 2024 is at the ¡°computer industry circa
1976" point of inflection.
Like microcomputers, M17 is open. Thus there¡¯s no
structural issue that prevents M17 from rapidly growing and
evolving.
In the discussion with my friend, I pointed out
that the M17 community doesn¡¯t need?to persuade repeater
owners, etc. that M17 is ¡°better¡± or even ¡°good enough¡± for them
to consider using it or adapting their repeaters to it. M17¡¯s
technology means that M17 is growing with Internet linking,
hotspots, adapters like Module 17, and repeaters that have added
MMDVM and M17 is just one mode among many that MMDVM enables.
While my friend¡¯s repeater mostly sits idle...
I have begun my planning to build up an MMDVM
repeater (which will mostly be for M17 and hopefully MMDVM-TNC
high speed data mode). I will build up, test it out in my shop
(N8GNJ Labs) and eventually have ready for an opportunity to put
it on the air from a good location.
I¡¯m tired of trying to persuade people that ¡°just
don¡¯t want to get it¡± about newer technology like M17.
For the same amount of energy and resources, I¡¯m just going to
route around them.
The M17 community, worldwide, apparently feels the
same. They¡¯re doing M17 because they want to use open
systems.
Thanks,
Steve N8GNJ
---
Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
Editor
Zero Retries Newsletter
-?
Radios are
Computers - With Antennas!
