Icom M17: The Future of Ham Radio

[@KG6NLWMotoRadio]

Nice video! M17 is definitely gaining traction especially in the digital world!

[@chichimus]

Thanks for the video. Picked up a Module17 and have it running with an FT817. Only one other ham in the area but hopefully this get taken up by more. Nice to hear about the possible boards.

[@Paddy_Roche]

Thanks Jim, great job.

[@KN4VA]

Thank you Jim. Have have the M17 board and using the FTM-6000, just like TO used on the live stream. My BER was zero, but I am using a UHF frequency, and turned the radio to 5 watts. I agree, the Baofeng Speaker/Mic is a limitation. I had very low audio. I am happy to have the M17 board, and make it all work, but I find that MVoice on a PI or running on Linux Mint to be better, at the moment. It is fun to play and experiment, and I look forward to growing with this protocol as they progress, 73,

[@batoniarz]

Still some room for improvement :)

[@manyshnooks]

Mvoice is definitely a better solution imo, at least until the board becomes more mature.

[@BigJohnsHamShack]

You definitely have more patients than I do. I would have either walked away or opened the door and airmailed the radio and M-17 board into the pasture behind my house.

[@FEPLabsRadio]

It became a serious challenge. I think that at this point the radio is still tooo hot for the M17 board/vice versa. On NXDN mode, it does work fine at 1W with the exact same hotspot hardware.

[@Jody_VE5SAR]

My theory on the poor BER is that your TX level from the module (adjustable by the multi-turn trimmer pot) is too hot, and clipping the baseband input of the radio. But until you throw that signal onto a scope, it's hard to tell. Plus the level the radio wants to see might be a challenge to find - not all radios like 1Vp-p levels. But it'd be interesting to see the radio-in and radio-out signals on a scope anyway - and since they're on your DE-9 connector - they're super easy to get to.

[@FEPLabsRadio]

That sounds like a follow up video! It's reliably tripping the hotspot, and I have not messed with the trimmers on the board, so that might be it.

[@theroguetomato5362]

You can type "clear" to clear the screen in Linux. Just FYI, great channel.

[@FEPLabsRadio]

Yes , but I can also just whack enter without moving my fingers around....

[@DonzLockz]

Nice Jeem, but I can't keep up with all the HAM rabbit holes. Lol

[@MikeN2MAK]

Fine business, Jim.

[@bradleybacik]

Way to Go Big Jeem !! -Doc Brad

[@manyshnooks]

Vk3jed is tony, who operates one of the reflectors for m17.

[@FEPLabsRadio]

Yes! I actually have seen his call and talked to Tony in the M17 discord. We debugged that issue the other night, he was unaware of it. I say we debugged...he debugged, I just told him and showed him what was happening. He's way smarter than me.

[@manyshnooks]

@@FEPLabsRadio Tony is absolutely everywhere haha, from Linux development to M17 to the repeaters in Bendigo, Australia 😂

[@theroguetomato5362]

There's a VK3JED youtube video on M17. Maybe that will explain why he keeps coming up.

[@saifal-badri]

Does the receiver have to have a similar setup to experience the higher codec quality?

[@batoniarz]

Wait till we release Micro17 running OpenRTX :)

[@FEPLabsRadio]

ME WANT!

[@dan_in_sd]

Jim, looks like the M17 signal is a little "hot" compared to the NXDN signal. Might be causing the BER. Was this testing done thru some attenuators, or can you somehow dial down the RF output power. :)

[@FEPLabsRadio]

The antenna for the Icom was outside, and it's set on 1W (It only goes to 5W). Maybe if I moved the hotspot to the other end of the house.

[@ScottEvans-vk7hse]

My only issue with this M17 board is that it's essentially just an analogue bridge. Think of it like allstar, so on the M17 side of things there's a high chance of distorted analogue audio, and when that then gets transcoded into M17 it's going to sound awful. A similar approach to using Tetra has been used for svxlink, and it suffers badly from distorted analogue input... Just my 2 cents...

[@batoniarz]

It's a modem - what else should it do? Or what/how it could do better?

[@FEPLabsRadio]

I'm pretty sure most of my audio issues is with the 3$ baofeng squeaker mic. I need to add a speaker jack to the board for full frontal clarity.

[@ScottEvans-vk7hse]

@@batoniarz OK out of the other digital voice modes that have been adopted into amateur radio... dstar, c4fm, nxdn, p25, dmr of those what one do you access them natively with FM? None, so that's what I mean. Yes doing it this way makes it quicker to access the M17 network, but M17 is claiming to be a opensource digital mode but due to the lack of a physical radio that can transmit the digital M17 (yes I'm aware of the mods to MD-380 dmr radios) Now do I have the solution to what I mentioned, no I don't. The only way I can access M17 is via droidstar and audio on that can be pretty dodgy at times too! I'm not saying that M17 is a waste of time, no absolutely not, as I run a M17 reflector!

[@batoniarz]

@@ScottEvans-vk7hse but the modem makes the radio transmit and receive M17 over RF.

[@cornbread-KO5RN]

🍺🍺😎👋Jim , how’s it keeping

[@arkyump]

Do we really need another mode?

[@FEPLabsRadio]

Honestly, IMO, not so much. I get the open source part of it, removing proprietary algorithms out of the mix, or specific hardware, but at the end of the day... It's an interesting project, but it needs a lot of commercial backing before it gets adopted widely. The guys working on it are sharp, no doubt about that, and are continually updating things. We'll see where it goes.