tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post2445290813588358334..comments2023-09-30T14:59:05.385+01:00Comments on G4ILO's Blog: Platform for progressAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11984840704237681015noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post-88160711448055585052011-03-03T06:43:09.373+00:002011-03-03T06:43:09.373+00:00I agree. I have bought many radios and have never ...I agree. I have bought many radios and have never loved any of them. Always something clunky or wrong.<br /><br />Thought of a way around the problem. Take a basic radio like the Yaesu ft-2800 or the FT-2900. The control head comes of with three screws. All of the important signals are present at the connectors joining the control head to the radio.<br /><br />Make an extender board that would pass the existing signals and also allow them to be tapped or replaced. Provide a Arduino area with a few nice chips like MSK modems, etc. Wrap the extended electronics in some nice looking sheet metal. Same radio, just a bit longer. Control head still works.<br /><br />If this were to exist, people could create the software to drive the radio the way they want. People might even start to share their software source code.<br /><br />How nice would that be?<br /><br />Right now ham radio is wrong because the essence of it is really now software. But the software is all proprietary either embedded in somebody's idea of a radio feature list or in their magical Windows program. The problem is that the magic is all locked up.<br /><br />It is kind of funny that hams make such noise about being non-commercial. Except that it is okay to lock the knowledge of how to do the hobby in a software or hardware product and sell that for money.<br /><br />Ham are also old. I am 57, same age as you. It takes a long time to accumulate the knowledge needed to put together a good radio. When that knowledge is all locked up, it stagnates.<br /><br />How many old hams use text messaging? And yet I have a daughter who has sent as many as 10,000 text messages in a month. If this is inconceivable to you like it is to me, well...<br /><br />What ham radio product does messaging on this scale? What ham radio product has something as simple as a contact list that every cell phone has? How is ham radio relevant at all to the text messaging generation?<br /><br />And hams do not even see that there is a problem. They are all happy about how some old geezer was able to send Morse code faster than a kid could type out a text message.<br /><br />A billion kids in the world all sending out multiple thousands of text messages per month. There hasn't been that volume of Morse code sent in all the time since it was invented.<br /><br />Good grief.Steven Snelgrovehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09367600975815107679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post-91042350383770687062011-02-19T13:08:17.120+00:002011-02-19T13:08:17.120+00:00Julian, this sound like a great idea and probably ...Julian, this sound like a great idea and probably some other one may be working it in one way or another. But I need to say that the only way that this can be do in an open source or public license is following the standards new or created for this kind of project. <br /><br />May be the use of cell phones a good idea because the powerful hardware they has, but only for the software running the standards of the OS on it, not the hardware needed for the radio frequency part of the ham radio band segment. So, this need another hardware to acomplish the task. <br /><br />This need a SDR full open source mix (software/hardware) or a more propietary design of elements like the normal products that we found around today. What a good idea, what a design challenge. <br /><br />Nice, Milton NP4KTMRiutorthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18298931407253612871noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post-5805330081668436542011-02-17T20:35:18.549+00:002011-02-17T20:35:18.549+00:00Are you mellowing on SDR Julian?Are you mellowing on SDR Julian?Alex Hillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09985363196485318644noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post-15631266061442338482011-02-17T17:30:37.122+00:002011-02-17T17:30:37.122+00:00I believe that there is a plan to create a "f...I believe that there is a plan to create a "future handheld" of this nature Julian, the last I remember reading about it was related to Bruce Perens and possibly TAPR, it came up during discussions about the Codec2 AMBE codec replacement efforts.<br /><br />At present it's probably a pipe-dream, and making it really advanced is difficult because the engineering in these modern mobile phones is astonishingly complex.Fenrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16692316517109517463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post-58305986310626574222011-02-17T16:43:29.585+00:002011-02-17T16:43:29.585+00:00On the other hand, the cause might be better serve...On the other hand, the cause might be better served by producing radio heads that can talk directly to existing<br />tablets and smartphones, i.e. I doubt the revenue is<br />there for a Yaesu/etal to undertake a greenfield <br />development for a device like iPhone. So the idea <br />would be to produce a radio that could talk over<br />Wifi or Bluetooth to the iPhone/iPad/Android<br />device and use that existing device's display,<br />user input, and software environments to support<br />a ham radio app. This is a lot like the PC/HRD model<br />of SDR applications. I've never been impressed with<br />the user interface design of any amateur product.<br />Too many nested menus, poor displays (contrast,<br />resolution), not at all intuitive or user friendly.<br />If you've ever tried to use an Icom R-20, you'll<br />know exactly what I mean. The K3 is about the<br />pinnacle of user friendliness in my shack, and<br />that device still has a sea of buttons and menus<br />that sometimes require digging out the manual<br />to find a setting.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05644988160614032940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-953397841255562532.post-24025361262633349722011-02-16T20:58:17.973+00:002011-02-16T20:58:17.973+00:00Now you're cooking. Good point on the niche ma...Now you're cooking. Good point on the niche market aspect. I guess a radio from a commercial manufacturer will be pretty dumb for many years. Maybe someone can kick off a smart-radio revolution that will convince the big names to make something for commercial entities that then can trickle down to us. <br /><br />The problem, then, would be to get the source so that modifications can be made. Or hope that an open platform like Android is used. I'm not going to hold my breath for anything like that to happen from the big three. There's a bigger chance that if it's going to happen, then it's going to come from the community itself.<br /><br />BTW, thanks for the blog Julian. I always enjoy reading new updates from you.Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06870834065486520015noreply@blogger.com