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Steve,

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.

On 11/8/24 6:10 am, Steve Stroh N8GNJ via wrote:

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

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Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)

Editor

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73 de Tony VK3JED/VK3IRL