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Apologies for my not being more of a presence on this list. Zero Retries is my priority and I’m still not done with my “big M17 article”, which I will post here in addition to Zero Retries when complete. I’m aiming to have that done by mid-July.

Administrivia:

Hopefully we'll be able to navigate a way through the transition to a paid list.? Certainly more of us subscribing to Zero Retries would be a good start. :)

Pending developments in M17-world that I’m aware of:

• What Woj will be discussing at HAM RADIO starting tomorrow. He’ll be a speaker and (I think) an exhibitor.
• The Connect Systems M17 radios to debut for real sale and use.

In between sport (and possibly work), I'll be keeping an eye on these developments on the M17 Discord.? I'm interested in the CSI radios, though right now, my budget doesn't permit buying one.

• One of the biggest things that would differentiate M17 from all the other DV systems is a seamless way to do data / messaging / telemetry (like APRS), etc. All the other DV systems have data / messaging / telemetry as an afterthought at best. Having been developed in the past decade, I’m hoping that M17 will be better than all those other systems in regard to data / messaging / telemetry. When I’ve asked a few times about it, I’m told “Yes, it’s in there” but no one has provided any pointers or details. Thus, from what little I know, data / messaging / telemetry in M17 is still an open question.

There's a couple of people interested in data.? I'm uncertain of the status, though one interesting recent development is a successful test of signing transmissions bu Woj himself.? If suitable key management can be arranged, this could be useful for authentication for service access - Up until now, on air service access has been via the "honesty system" - simply trusting that the callsign provided or embedded in the protocol is accurate.? Now there's potential to add a chain of trust.

All the YouTube videos that we’ve seen to date have been general introductions, updates, or “science experiments” like how to set up Module 17 or mod radios to implement M17.

I've done a couple of demos on YouTube myself.

I think that showing / discussing repeaters that have MMDVM (and thus, M17 as just another DV mode) and the Connect Systems portables using such a repeater will go a long way to making M17 more mainstream.

I have such a repeater on test.? Awaiting an antenna and updating the licence to reflect the new location, before it can go operational without the dummy load it's currently using.

One point that I think hasn’t been made… strongly enough… is that for all of those folks that don’t like that D-Star, DMR, SF, P25, etc. all use the DVSI proprietary CODEC chip… well, now those folks HAVE an option with M17 using Codec 2. Thus every time we see those arguments that “proprietary CODECs shouldn’t be allowed on Amateur Radio”, we need to point out that there IS now an option for that issue with M17.

I've certainly got interest from open source enthusiasts.

Unfortunately there are helluva lot of “hard coded” DMR, D-Star, SF repeaters out there that folks are going to be loathe to change. Thus there’s going to have to be a lot of work to experiment and document and create videos on how those hard coded repeaters can be made to run MMDVM and M17.

If you can access the modulator and discriminator directly, then it's possible to add an MMDVM and convert to M17 (or multimode).

Lastly...

PLEASE TALK AMONGST YOURSELVES ABOUT M17 HERE ON THIS LIST! THIS IS NOT A SOAPBOAX / BROADCAST LIST, IT’S INTENDED TO BE A DISCUSSION, AND I’M VERY MUCH IN LEARNING MODE ABOUT M17.

I'm happy to share what I know, and I'm still furthering my own experimentation and implementation.

Thanks,

Steve N8GNJ

(Just one of many co-conspirators working to promote M17 and other 21st century Amateur Radio systems)

Join the club! :)

-- 
73 de Tony VK3JED/VK3IRL