Some great early history there Tom,
thanks for filling in some gaps I didn't know either.? I was one
of the DroidStar only early adopters myself.
As for my own involvement, COVID caused a resurgence of my
interest in ham radio, as it was the perfect activity for
lockdowns - one could stay home and have social interactions with
others over the air.? I quickly discovered a multimode system on
VK3RBA and was intrigued at their integration of several modes.? I
had done a lot of work on IRLP/Echolink intergration and EchoIRLP
years earlier.
Anyway, I discovered DVSwitch not long after and started
experimenting with building my own multimode gateway, and while
learning about DVSwitch, I saw mention of "M17" in the DVSwitch
groups.? I had no idea what M17 was, but a Google search quickly
educated me and I was instantly hooked.? Some time after, the
arrival of USRP2M17 gave me cause to add M17 capabilities to my
expanding multimode reflector.? That system has since grown into a
major multimode hub servicing several independent networks.
[Edited Message Follows]
Thanks for mentioning mvoice Tony.
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Steve, I can fill in some less important areas of M17
development that has nothing to do with the important part,
radios and their firmware.
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______________________________
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I am pretty much an open-source fanatic, so when I heard of
the M17 Project in early 2020, I had a few initial conversations
with Steve, KC1AWV, on the M17 IRC channel and I was very
excited about the project.
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I was working on another project that was taking most of my
free hours, but finished it up in the late summer of 2020. I
knew I could help the M17 Project, in at least a small way. I
got back on the IRC channel and started asking question about
M17 internet packets. That part of the spec wasn't yet nailed
down so had several email exchanges with Mike, W2FBI and Steve.
The three of us settled enough on the specifics, that I
squirreled myself away with my trusty laptop.
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I wanted to write a reflector for M17. I already new its
name, mrefd. I didn't want to write it from scratch, but I knew
of only two open-source reflector at that time. Because of its
design, I chose xlxd as a starting point, an open-source
transcoding reflector written by Jean-Luc, LX3JL and Luc, LX1IQ.
I essentially gutted the multi-mode aspects of xlxd, as a
framework for mrefd, so I just had to write the classes for the
M17 protocol. I also needed an M17 client to test the reflector,
so I coded mvoice basing it on another DStar app I had written
earlier.
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After testing everything I could think of, on or about Oct.
17, 2020, my good friend and co-developer, Colby,
W1BSB and I used mvoice to have the first M17 QSO going direct
mvoice to mvoice (AZ to ME). Then we connected to the M17-USA
reflector, at that time running on a server owned by Colby and
had another QSO through the reflector. On that day, several
bug were found and squashed.
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A few days later, after fixing a few more things and filling
in some details in the READMEs, I Emailed Mike about what Colby
and I had done. Then Mike announce on the M17 IRC channel
something like "Tom has developed a ****-load of working M17
software and ...". What happened next was amazing...
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There was a lot of excitement! I think a lot of hams just wanted
to hear what M17 sounded like. So, within a very short time
there were mrefd reflectors running everywhere and mvoice bugs
were coming in hot and heavy. Very quickly Doug, AD8DP added the
M17-protocol to Droidstar. Within a year, there were over 100
M17 reflectors all over the world and Steve had a page on the
M17 Project website where you could register your reflector and
view the rapidly growing list of reflectors. It was amazing.
There were lots of hams having QSOs with other hams all over the
world, using the M17 Spec, even though precious few were doing
it with RF. I think this illustrates very well how hungry hams
were for a V/UHF digital voice mode that 100% belongs to them!
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Tom N7TAE
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