I had the awesome opportunity to check on this amazing radio during HAM fair in Friedrichshafen. The guys were very friendly, they explain every tiny detail. Hope this product will see the light of production. The sooner the better...
This is excellent. I hope manufacturers pick up M17, it's great to have open source solutions for things like this, and amateur radio is truly built for experimentation and open source projects like this.
At some point I hope that there would be a module that can be added to any HF and VHF/UHF radio, that lets you transmit a M17 or another open source digital mode that can cary voice over traditional analog signals. And if you I add a AI or an ASIC that can compress or upscale the received and transmitted voice, imagine the range and voice quality that would be possible. Proper AES 256 encryption is also a feature that is required for a lot of use cases, and should be added to all the different digital modes
@@DavidLopez-bz4rj Yes and no. I mainly use ham radio for my hobby, but I also have local permits to use different frequencies that unlocked ham radio equipment works well on. So when i'm out hunting and using a frequency that I have a permit to use. Encryption would be great to allow me and my friends to speak freely without interference. This is just an example since the use cases for encryption is endless.
@@TheJensss- Your “unlocked ham radio equipment” is illegal to use on any service that it’s not typed accepted for. It doesn’t matter what frequencies you’re licensed for, unlocked equipment, MARS mods, etc., aren’t allowed on frequencies outside the designated ham bands. You should’ve learned that when obtaining your amateur radio license.
@@dereklea1183 As long as the equipment is not misused it's not a problem. My car also goes well beyond the speed limit, but that is not an issue if used correctly and other laws and regulations are followed.
M17 looks to have promise for getting away from the proprietary AMBE codec. Unfortunately the current M17 audio quality leaves a bit to be desired. Several of M17 examples here have that peculiar ascending step pitch change with sounds a bit like rock songs where they intentionally over-do the auto-tune. If the intelligibility can be improved, it would be fantastic.
I was going to say the same thing. Keep in mind though, the original DMR codecs sounded terrible as well. I remember thinking the same thing when playing around on the original md-380. So I waited. Once updates were made to ambe, and I heard a v2 md-380 a couple years later, it was night and day. I ended up buying one, and diving full in on DMR, both the repeater community, but also doing lots of long range simplex voice, and text msg'ing. A year or so later, I could not stand the sound of FM with the static, and lack of text msg'ing. Leaving a DMR radio in the car and being able to RX simplex text msgs that I could read whenever time permitted was just too valuable. I assume this mode will progress much in the same way. The fact that it's non proprietary makes it all the better! By the way, someone gave me an old original code md-380, running the v1 chip set. It still sounds awful, and cannot be updated via firmware since the chip is running the decoder algorithm and it's hardware based. Fun fact.
@@paaao Thank you for the reply.. Yes the original hardware amD-380 does make everyone sound almost the same. I had one and replaced it with the Alinco version of the Anytone HT. The speech is still kind of robotic, but it is easier to differentiate between people. The radio into which the other person is speaking matters too. The MD-380 encoding sound quality wasn’t great.
@@paaao Thanks. It is hard to argue with the affordability of an MD-380. I like the relatively rugged design, though I believe the case is ABS plastic. Nice loud speaker too. One of the bugs I ran into is that even if you set the FM channel width to 25 KHz deviation, the receive seems to always be 12.5 KHz wide. As long as the incoming audio isn’t too ‘hot’ that’s fine. One of the repeaters near me runs it’s deviation full channel width and the MD-380 mutes sporadically on moderately loud talkers. My IFR 1200S service monitor shows the repeater’s center frequency, CTCSS level and deviation are within spec. I also have an MD-2017 and it behaves the same way on FM receive. The Alinco DJ-MD5 receives 25 KHz FM channels correctly without clipping the audio.
@@wtmayhew I love the mono band versions of the md-380. The receive is extremely sensitive, and yes, if people are overmodulated, using compression, etc... on FM, and they clip, the radio will go silent. You can fix to some degree by turning your volume down when that happens. It's really about audio levels more than deviation, but the two are somewhat tied together.
All VHF/UHF digital modes seem to have the same problem.. vendor locked radio/HT firmware. (favoring their digital flavor).... M17's future is linked directly to this problem.
It's the same like with every DV mode, the sound is just horrible. For me it's sometimes barely understandable. So until that's improved, I rather have analog (FM) voice with a little bit of static..
@@repatch43 Being open source, there is a chance that someone or some group can come up with an improved algorithm. For now it seems to sound decidedly worse than the AMBE codec, and AMBE sounds not great. Motorola does something interesting on their Moto Trbo M7 HT. They have a speech preprocessor which goes in front of the codec. When you set up the HT, you pick a particular language and the preprocessor is supposed to do some magic based on the specific language to make the sound more natural coming out of the receiver. I’ve heard it demo’ed on UA-cam, and I would rate any improvement as fairly subtle. The other thing Moto does is active noise cancellation with a mic on the back of the HT to pick up and invert ambient to combine with the front audio. That actually seems to be a fairly useful feature.
The quality is much better with Droidstar when both sides use it. Check for yourself. Keep in mind that modified radios will never be able to give as good results as dedicated software.
Excellent video thanks for sharing. I use blue o dv on windows and its sounds a lot better than on your normal digimodes on radio. One of the big issues with digital modes is theability to cross mode, for example, someone with a poor sounding dmr setup can come on a ysf channel and it sounds really bad. Fusion sounds a lot better, with dmr you have a huge variation of audio levels and quality from OK sounding to awful, fusion sounds mostly decent. Everyone should be on allstar in my opinion the audio quality is superb but the same issue is cross mode from crap digital modes is often allowed and I think we need a platform like allstar to be free from the disgraceful audio quality of digi modes. Like everything else all these different modes are too complicated to setup with the exception of fusion and bluedv.
People love to hate and criticize. This is under development dumb asses. They know it could sound better. They are experimenting and innovating. Why don't you jump in and help them out ? If it does not come in plastic packaging and plug & play it's crap, right ? This is what Ham Radio is about. I don't understand a lot of what they are doing but I know enough to respect it--why don't you show some too ?
Did MI-6 develop this codec?.....:) I wonder if it will eventually work on HF,? Well I guess time will tell. Thanks for the information and have a nice day,73
Codec2 started on HF, the first HF QSOs using it were over 10 years ago, there was even a self-contained fist-mic with the encoder/decoder contained within the mic itself, which could be used with any HF radio.
I would say it depends on the regulatory body of where you’re. Reducing the bit rate enough to fit within allowable HF bandwidth restrictions is a bit of a challenge here in the US. It would be great to set aside, say 20 - 50 KHz of 20 meters for wide band digital testing. It would be interesting to see if a sort of HF CDMA could be developed to allow simultaneous multiple conversations to coexist in that small allocation. For CDMA to work, accurate timing is necessary, but syncing to GNSS satellites is not a big deal these days. CDMA also needs fairly equally matched signal levels at the receiver and I don’t know how you’d do that on HF due to variable propagation and receivers all over the place.
All of this seems to be possible with easily accessible, cheaper analogue FM gear. I have DStar radios but in common use it’s pointless really, didn’t IRLP Echolink do most of it anyway?
I'm not interested in any of the digital modes. Even back in the 80s and 90s I totally ignored packet when it was getting popular. Who needs it? Meh!!! Maybe you but not me. I have the "mostly for emergencies" train of thought when it comes to ham. Not into it for entertainment. I rarely even get on and talk to anyone even analog. But I renew my license every ten years and keep mostly VHF/UHF radios ready to go and up to date. But I am planning to try to re-energize 220 band in my area. 15 or 20 1.25m repeaters in the Salt Lake Utah area but nobody gets on them!! Really not even that many on 440 either. Utah is mostly a 2 meter state it seems.
First I've heard of it but like all DMR stuff duff audio compared to D-Star or fusion so not worth the time diluting the digital side of ham radio further. Sorry as I like a lot of the stuff you post.
An digital open standard is what should be our common goal. But what we need is a digital mode that does not sound like you are talking into a tin can. I prefer FM over digital in 99% of the cases due to audio fidelity.
@@adrianoragazzo1321 your correct c4fm just carries the call sign and or repeater call. Better audio quality but that mode was designed for amateur use.
@stevebrodie79 P25, DMR, DSTAR, C4FM etc etc all have their place in the ham radio community, some sounding better than others. M17 is still relatively new, and improvements are happening all the time. As I said in the video, M17 doesnt have any license restrictions, so we, as amateurs, can experiment with this protocol. That's where the beauty of M17 lays.
@@adrianoragazzo1321 "if you pay for it or it's free"... It's not about the price! It is about freedom! You are not allowed to inspect, redistribute, modify or redistribute modified versions on the unfree AMBE codec. But you are allowed to do this with this one. The reference implementation is under the GPL, free software. One difference between Amateur Radio and CB Radio is, you are not allowed to modify a CB Radio but in Amateur Radio you are allowed to modify an existing or even build a Radio from scratch. It is the only way to learn and improve and not just operate something. In short: It is about freedom not price.
Garbage audio just like DMR and all the rest of the digital audio crap! It all sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher speaking to me! I'll stick with good old wide band FM! No one would even be watching T.V. now if the picture got worse when they switched from analog to digital!
Partially true, but it's also a USB to UART converter and a USB hub, all in one. So technically not just a soundcard interface. Otherwise it's true, software is needed.
@@W4TRI_Ronny The Signalink is only really capable of AFSK modes, as there's transformers in the audio path. The Signalink is also not capable of CAT control of the radio.
Bruh! This is the best M17 video I've seen to date! Very thorough and showcases the capabilities.
I appreciate that!
I had the awesome opportunity to check on this amazing radio during HAM fair in Friedrichshafen. The guys were very friendly, they explain every tiny detail. Hope this product will see the light of production. The sooner the better...
Thanks for visiting our booth! We need more devs to speed up efforts.
This is excellent. I hope manufacturers pick up M17, it's great to have open source solutions for things like this, and amateur radio is truly built for experimentation and open source projects like this.
It's happening as we speak :) But the process is kinda slow.
At some point I hope that there would be a module that can be added to any HF and VHF/UHF radio, that lets you transmit a M17 or another open source digital mode that can cary voice over traditional analog signals. And if you I add a AI or an ASIC that can compress or upscale the received and transmitted voice, imagine the range and voice quality that would be possible.
Proper AES 256 encryption is also a feature that is required for a lot of use cases, and should be added to all the different digital modes
Encryption on ham radio? Are you a licensed operator? 😢
@@DavidLopez-bz4rj Yes and no. I mainly use ham radio for my hobby, but I also have local permits to use different frequencies that unlocked ham radio equipment works well on.
So when i'm out hunting and using a frequency that I have a permit to use. Encryption would be great to allow me and my friends to speak freely without interference. This is just an example since the use cases for encryption is endless.
@@DavidLopez-bz4rjthe dreaded encryption is used by hams all over the place. Deal with it.
@@TheJensss- Your “unlocked ham radio equipment” is illegal to use on any service that it’s not typed accepted for. It doesn’t matter what frequencies you’re licensed for, unlocked equipment, MARS mods, etc., aren’t allowed on frequencies outside the designated ham bands. You should’ve learned that when obtaining your amateur radio license.
@@dereklea1183 As long as the equipment is not misused it's not a problem. My car also goes well beyond the speed limit, but that is not an issue if used correctly and other laws and regulations are followed.
Great video! A lot of information and just on the right level, crossing over between maker/developer/ham interests.
Glad you enjoyed it!
M17 looks to have promise for getting away from the proprietary AMBE codec. Unfortunately the current M17 audio quality leaves a bit to be desired. Several of M17 examples here have that peculiar ascending step pitch change with sounds a bit like rock songs where they intentionally over-do the auto-tune. If the intelligibility can be improved, it would be fantastic.
I was going to say the same thing. Keep in mind though, the original DMR codecs sounded terrible as well. I remember thinking the same thing when playing around on the original md-380. So I waited. Once updates were made to ambe, and I heard a v2 md-380 a couple years later, it was night and day. I ended up buying one, and diving full in on DMR, both the repeater community, but also doing lots of long range simplex voice, and text msg'ing. A year or so later, I could not stand the sound of FM with the static, and lack of text msg'ing. Leaving a DMR radio in the car and being able to RX simplex text msgs that I could read whenever time permitted was just too valuable. I assume this mode will progress much in the same way. The fact that it's non proprietary makes it all the better!
By the way, someone gave me an old original code md-380, running the v1 chip set. It still sounds awful, and cannot be updated via firmware since the chip is running the decoder algorithm and it's hardware based. Fun fact.
@@paaao Thank you for the reply.. Yes the original hardware amD-380 does make everyone sound almost the same. I had one and replaced it with the Alinco version of the Anytone HT. The speech is still kind of robotic, but it is easier to differentiate between people. The radio into which the other person is speaking matters too. The MD-380 encoding sound quality wasn’t great.
@@wtmayhew the later md-380 models sound great in my opinion. That original codec was real bad however...
@@paaao Thanks. It is hard to argue with the affordability of an MD-380. I like the relatively rugged design, though I believe the case is ABS plastic. Nice loud speaker too. One of the bugs I ran into is that even if you set the FM channel width to 25 KHz deviation, the receive seems to always be 12.5 KHz wide. As long as the incoming audio isn’t too ‘hot’ that’s fine. One of the repeaters near me runs it’s deviation full channel width and the MD-380 mutes sporadically on moderately loud talkers. My IFR 1200S service monitor shows the repeater’s center frequency, CTCSS level and deviation are within spec. I also have an MD-2017 and it behaves the same way on FM receive. The Alinco DJ-MD5 receives 25 KHz FM channels correctly without clipping the audio.
@@wtmayhew I love the mono band versions of the md-380. The receive is extremely sensitive, and yes, if people are overmodulated, using compression, etc... on FM, and they clip, the radio will go silent. You can fix to some degree by turning your volume down when that happens. It's really about audio levels more than deviation, but the two are somewhat tied together.
Connect systems is an awesome company. They have been a long time commercial ltr supporter. Great company great radios and great support.
Excellent video. I have begun to experiment with M17.
Awesome! Glad I have made that spark of interest! Watch out for more real soon!
Awesome, looking forward to a video on the module 17 !
Thanks!
Welcome!
So it's easy to go order the module 17, but parts are short for the full module as of Friday last. Again, outstanding video coverage.!
All VHF/UHF digital modes seem to have the same problem.. vendor locked radio/HT firmware. (favoring their digital flavor).... M17's future is linked directly to this problem.
M17 and OpenRTX to the rescue :) And MMDVM!
Very interesting and informative.
Glad you think so!
Thanks for education us man. Greetings from Sweden.
My pleasure!
First I've heard of it, how interesting!
Thanks for watching :-)
It's the same like with every DV mode, the sound is just horrible. For me it's sometimes barely understandable. So until that's improved, I rather have analog (FM) voice with a little bit of static..
Same, the artifacting is so distracting I can't imagine listening to that for any length of time
@@repatch43 Being open source, there is a chance that someone or some group can come up with an improved algorithm. For now it seems to sound decidedly worse than the AMBE codec, and AMBE sounds not great.
Motorola does something interesting on their Moto Trbo M7 HT. They have a speech preprocessor which goes in front of the codec. When you set up the HT, you pick a particular language and the preprocessor is supposed to do some magic based on the specific language to make the sound more natural coming out of the receiver. I’ve heard it demo’ed on UA-cam, and I would rate any improvement as fairly subtle. The other thing Moto does is active noise cancellation with a mic on the back of the HT to pick up and invert ambient to combine with the front audio. That actually seems to be a fairly useful feature.
The quality is much better with Droidstar when both sides use it. Check for yourself. Keep in mind that modified radios will never be able to give as good results as dedicated software.
@@batoniarz Thanks for sharing your experience.
Excellent video thanks for sharing.
I use blue o dv on windows and its sounds a lot better than on your normal digimodes on radio.
One of the big issues with digital modes is theability to cross mode, for example, someone with a poor sounding dmr setup can come on a ysf channel and it sounds really bad.
Fusion sounds a lot better, with dmr you have a huge variation of audio levels and quality from OK sounding to awful, fusion sounds mostly decent.
Everyone should be on allstar in my opinion the audio quality is superb but the same issue is cross mode from crap digital modes is often allowed and I think we need a platform like allstar to be free from the disgraceful audio quality of digi modes.
Like everything else all these different modes are too complicated to setup with the exception of fusion and bluedv.
I'm waiting for it to mature quite a bit. In the meantime FreeDV looks interesting.
People love to hate and criticize. This is under development dumb asses. They know it could sound better. They are experimenting and innovating. Why don't you jump in and help them out ? If it does not come in plastic packaging and plug & play it's crap, right ? This is what Ham Radio is about. I don't understand a lot of what they are doing but I know enough to respect it--why don't you show some too ?
Did MI-6 develop this codec?.....:)
I wonder if it will eventually work on HF,? Well I guess time will tell.
Thanks for the information and have a nice day,73
Codec2 works on HF already. Google "FreeDV".
Codec2 started on HF, the first HF QSOs using it were over 10 years ago, there was even a self-contained fist-mic with the encoder/decoder contained within the mic itself, which could be used with any HF radio.
Is it possible to use this on HF?
M17 is designed for VHF/UHF. There is another project called FreeDV that uses the same Codec2 voice system but is HF focused.
I would say it depends on the regulatory body of where you’re. Reducing the bit rate enough to fit within allowable HF bandwidth restrictions is a bit of a challenge here in the US. It would be great to set aside, say 20 - 50 KHz of 20 meters for wide band digital testing. It would be interesting to see if a sort of HF CDMA could be developed to allow simultaneous multiple conversations to coexist in that small allocation. For CDMA to work, accurate timing is necessary, but syncing to GNSS satellites is not a big deal these days. CDMA also needs fairly equally matched signal levels at the receiver and I don’t know how you’d do that on HF due to variable propagation and receivers all over the place.
All of this seems to be possible with easily accessible, cheaper analogue FM gear. I have DStar radios but in common use it’s pointless really, didn’t IRLP Echolink do most of it anyway?
Brill
Still sounds like crap just like the other modes, P25 and Fusion Wide are a lot better
Well that's typical with radio and electronics, you can never keep up with technology !
Has anyone experimented with the 3 kbps open source Lyra codec from Google?
I'm not interested in any of the digital modes. Even back in the 80s and 90s I totally ignored packet when it was getting popular. Who needs it? Meh!!! Maybe you but not me. I have the "mostly for emergencies" train of thought when it comes to ham. Not into it for entertainment. I rarely even get on and talk to anyone even analog. But I renew my license every ten years and keep mostly VHF/UHF radios ready to go and up to date. But I am planning to try to re-energize 220 band in my area. 15 or 20 1.25m repeaters in the Salt Lake Utah area but nobody gets on them!! Really not even that many on 440 either. Utah is mostly a 2 meter state it seems.
First I've heard of it but like all DMR stuff duff audio compared to D-Star or fusion so not worth the time diluting the digital side of ham radio further.
Sorry as I like a lot of the stuff you post.
An digital open standard is what should be our common goal. But what we need is a digital mode that does not sound like you are talking into a tin can.
I prefer FM over digital in 99% of the cases due to audio fidelity.
All digital modes seem to have the same problem: they sound terrible.
That's the narrow bandwidth. Price to pay for the ability to carry data. Great video. I've accessed M17
Not the c4fm on wide .
@@adrianoragazzo1321 your correct c4fm just carries the call sign and or repeater call. Better audio quality but that mode was designed for amateur use.
@@hamradioonthegoIt's also the way they fail. Instead of nicely fading out, they pop, echo, and change vowel sounds.
Kenwood digital stuff is the best.. it's fdma I believe
gosh it sounds so bad... idk why people love digital so much, when it SUCKS!
Not any worse than SSB 😂
M17 may be open source, but the audio quality is garbage in most of these samples…no thanks.
Way too complicated.
The audio quality compared to all other digital modes is crap.
We are open to your contribution to Codec2's code to make it sound better.
@@batoniarz no need too as P25 and DMR are sounding great in my area so no need for another digital mode.
@stevebrodie79 P25, DMR, DSTAR, C4FM etc etc all have their place in the ham radio community, some sounding better than others. M17 is still relatively new, and improvements are happening all the time. As I said in the video, M17 doesnt have any license restrictions, so we, as amateurs, can experiment with this protocol. That's where the beauty of M17 lays.
@@stevebrodie79 DMR sounds crap too.
I have heard about M17, but I am not
interested in another Digital Mode.
I started with D STAR in 2010, and
Fusion and DMR more recently.
73 de W2CH
It's not just another dv mode. It's freedom!
As @@batoniarz said, M17 is the only Free and Open one.
@@batoniarz But it IS also another digital protocol : it doesn't matter if you pay for it or it's free for all. It IS a digital protocol .
@@adrianoragazzo1321 did I say it isn't? No :)
@@adrianoragazzo1321 "if you pay for it or it's free"... It's not about the price! It is about freedom!
You are not allowed to inspect, redistribute, modify or redistribute modified versions on the unfree AMBE codec. But you are allowed to do this with this one. The reference implementation is under the GPL, free software. One difference between Amateur Radio and CB Radio is, you are not allowed to modify a CB Radio but in Amateur Radio you are allowed to modify an existing or even build a Radio from scratch. It is the only way to learn and improve and not just operate something.
In short: It is about freedom not price.
Garbage audio just like DMR and all the rest of the digital audio crap! It all sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher speaking to me! I'll stick with good old wide band FM! No one would even be watching T.V. now if the picture got worse when they switched from analog to digital!
Sorry but Digirig is nothing more than a sound card interface. It's a good one but needs software to become a TNC.
Partially true, but it's also a USB to UART converter and a USB hub, all in one. So technically not just a soundcard interface. Otherwise it's true, software is needed.
@@batoniarz how much different from signallink is this device?
@@W4TRI_RonnyI'm not familiar with that device.
@@W4TRI_Ronny The Signalink is only really capable of AFSK modes, as there's transformers in the audio path. The Signalink is also not capable of CAT control of the radio.
Hi, could I use this for PMR? 331RL328 is my call and I wanna try this to experiment with this mode.