DV Dongle

Forum for the promotion and understanding of digital voice on the amateur bands.

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AB9JV
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DV Dongle

Post by AB9JV »

Has anyone else experimented with the DVDongle?

It is a USB device that allows one to connect to the D-Star Gateways over the internet via their home PC (or Mac)

I ordered one from HRO and finally got it running on a PPC G5 Mac.

The software seems more inclined to the Windows user or the Intel Mac user.

It seems to work as it should. Kind of like Digital Echolink, but it does not announce your presence when you log in to a remote system, just to listen. Less annoying than Echolink, I say.

I know you Moto guys will say Pfffft to D-Star, but it has a growing user base.

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Re: DV Dongle

Post by kb9mwr »

Has anyone else experimented with the DVDongle?
I've been following a number of groups, of which I will share my top ones here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dstar_development/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gmsk_dv_node/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/rtpDir/ -D-Star-IRLP-Echolink-Asterisk bridge

What I see most hams doing with the $200 DV dongle, to me doesn't constitute experimentation. I see it being used to access to a private voice network over a computer. To me that is an obvious waste of time and money, solely to fill the Inet Labs/(AA4RC) (DV dongle's manufacture) pocket.

The ID-RPC2 controller is really a no frills controller. You can't program it to announce club meetings or any kind of salutations.

However if a DV dongle is added on site to provide this conversion to AMBE, of course this is all possible with some scripting. As a matter of fact since each
user transmission contains a callsign, you should be able to create custom greetings based off decoded data, by using a text to speech engine such as Cepstral or Festival. "Welcome KB9MWR to the K9EAM D-Star repeater." "You have one voice mail message from N9PAV, left yesterday"... A relational database or QRZ lookup could even make it more personal with first name greetings. Last heard callsign stats could be kept and queried via touch tones and/or exported
to a club webpage.... Really there is so much that can be done here....

GMSK adapters are intended for just what the name says. Decoding raw GMSK from _over the air_. Again I feel there is so much that can be done here too.

Talking over a $200 echolink thing a ma-bob is way over-rated in my opinion.
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by Strike Team »

They cost 200 pounds in the UK - around 290 US Dollars :anus: .

IMO D-Star is a sack of shite. It's a closed standard and hardly appropriate to ham radio. The radio equipment is expensive, and unlike, Echolink where a PC, headset, free software and broadband connection are all that are needed, you need to buy the staggeringly overpriced DV-Dong to connect to D-Shit nodes via the internet.

I reckon :ham: are being ripped over Feces-Star. In time we will see large quantities of affordable surplus TETRA, TETRAPOL, P25, and Mototrbo equipment becoming available, so we won't be tied into buying overpriced D-Stink gear. I'm sticking with FM and SSB gear until I see how this whole digital voice thing shakes out. I don't want to end up lumbered with the hammie equivalent of BetaMax. Does that make me an OF? :baby: .
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by motorola_otaku »

To be fair, TRBO is also a 100% proprietary mode.

TETRA would be fun to play with, but from what I understand it's very infrastructure-intensive and doesn't have a non-trunked repeater mode.. you get Network and DMO (direct) and that's it. P25 and D-Suck can at least be repeated with a couple of modified mobile radios strapped back to back.. poorly, but it works. No such luck with TETRA.

My $.02 on the whole thing is that there's plenty of spectrum for everyone to play. What doesn't need to happen, and people are dipshits for pushing for, is a mandated digital voice standard for VHF and up.
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by motorola_otaku »

fake edit: Also, the OP is a year and a day old. :baby:
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by KE7JFF »

motorola_otaku wrote:To be fair, TRBO is also a 100% proprietary mode.

TETRA would be fun to play with, but from what I understand it's very infrastructure-intensive and doesn't have a non-trunked repeater mode.. you get Network and DMO (direct) and that's it. P25 and D-Suck can at least be repeated with a couple of modified mobile radios strapped back to back.. poorly, but it works. No such luck with TETRA.

My $.02 on the whole thing is that there's plenty of spectrum for everyone to play. What doesn't need to happen, and people are dipshits for pushing for, is a mandated digital voice standard for VHF and up.
I thought TRBO was in some sort of ETSI standard?
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by mr.syntrx »

Its is. ETSI TS 102 361
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escomm
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by escomm »

Wasn't aware TRBO was being marketed to hams.

Also, can D-STAR send encrypted credit card numbers from a remote terminal over the air back to the main box which is interfaced to a merchant gateway? You can write citations with D-STAR?

Just sayin'
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by Strike Team »

escomm wrote:Wasn't aware TRBO was being marketed to hams.
Neither are Key, Motorola, Phillips, Simoco, P25, etc.
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escomm
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by escomm »

Strike Team wrote:
escomm wrote:Wasn't aware TRBO was being marketed to hams.
Neither are Key, Motorola, Phillips, Simoco, P25, etc.
Point being that D-Star is being marketed to hams, not sure why Otaku thought pointing out TRBO being proprietary was "being fair."
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by motorola_otaku »

KE7JFF wrote:I thought TRBO was in some sort of ETSI standard?
"Based on some sort of ETSI standard" would be more appropriate. The TRBO implementation in current production is proprietary enough that anyone else wanting to make a radio for it would need to license it from Big M.

In any event, DVSI gets their piece whether you play D-STAR or P25. :ve4uo:
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escomm
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by escomm »

TETRA is an ETSI standard and requires licensing from Motorola. Other than the fact it requires a 25KHz carrier this is the primary reason you won't find TETRA in the US......
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by mancow »

D Star is neat stuff and is great for what it's meant for. It has some neat hammy friendly features like scrolling ID info on the screen and such. I don't see how it and P25 can really be compared against each other in any real meaningful way since the P25 isn't meant as a consumer electronics plug and play type of application.
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Re: DV Dongle

Post by mr.syntrx »

escomm wrote:Wasn't aware TRBO was being marketed to hams.

Also, can D-STAR send encrypted credit card numbers from a remote terminal over the air back to the main box which is interfaced to a merchant gateway? You can write citations with D-STAR?

Just sayin'
Over D-Star DD, technically, yep. Legally, no.
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