This is awesome. M17/freeDV/codec2 is pretty great and unlike *all* the others it doesn't require licensing which is how it should be for amateur radio, especially since it works as well it's better. With a little luck one of the larger makers will notice, or even Bridgecom or Quansheng. Hey Alinco, I have an idea for you.
Thanks for this video. Wasn’t aware of M17, but I am very familiar with Connect Systems as I have or have had five of their radios. I’ll have to investigate this mode and maybe modify my RT3S or UV380 to experiment with this mode.
Please demonstrate the accessibility features. I'd like to hear the speech output and learn if you can store a channel without using the display. WB3CAI
One of my first DMR radios was a CS580. Loved it, but not enough accessibility. Please make another video showing the accessibility. My friend Joe VK7JS worked on voice prompts for Open RTX.
I've following the CS7000-M17 dev via the M17 Project Matrix channel - where quite a lot of devs hang out. Have to say that programming cable attachment looks massively clunky to my eyes. Great review and frankly I would love to get one but gonna have to save up for it.
I installed Droidstar onto my 4G smartwatch with microSIM chip. I tried to QSO over M17 but I could only three stations in three weeks. I think the M17 will remain just an experiment. Luckily, I don't have an exorbitantly expensive radio...
Great technical detail as usual. Off topic, why has nobody demonstrated the capabilities of the Retevis Ailunce HS3 SDR HF/VHF/UHF Transceiver, the price is now US$ 676.99.
@@akeem11h ignore me mis-read the radio name. You are right, you seem to be getting a lot of radio - especially as it seems to be normally retailing for around 1000 USD.
Interesting radio for sure. The one thing is, it cant switch from M17 to DMR without changing the firmware? Is yours a M17 Plus or just the standard M17 model? I see that the Plus can do Dstar, P25 and other protocols too. Hope it isn't all just updating firmware each time.
Decentralized system. Complete openness. No registration required. Digital signatures are available. Easy to implement through libm17, gr-m17 etc. Why were light bulbs invented when there was a plethora of other light sources available?
On a practical level, what does it offer that DMR doesn't? M17 may be a purer and truly open system, but I don't see how DMR has suffered from that not being the case? For example, DMR radios are as cheap as it's possible to make a commercial radio and they are made by a multitude of different manufacturers, the networks are maintained by volunteers, the repeater infrastructure is maintained by volunteers. How is M17 going to make this better? I'm just not seeing why we need a new extra lightbulb in a room full of lightbulbs?
@@batoniarz True, but volunteers for such vast infrastructure are going to come from the same pool of people, probably the exact same people. Innovation is a good thing, but I'm yet to see the practical benefits from a system that is basically offering the same end user functionality as an existing system. To cut to the chase, how am I going to persuade my local hams to take this system up over DMR, D-Star, or Fusion? I get that the hardware geeks might love the innovation and open source nature of it, but to an end user, it's just "another damn radio to buy," to be able to talk to an even smaller subset of hams. What's it's USP from an end users perspective?
It’s better in real life and hardware to hardware. I should have recorded the RT3S listening to the CS7000 instead, as the RT3S mod is a bit of a bodge compared to native support.
All of the digital modes I've heard so far sound horrible. Even the video on YT of police, using obviously digital radios, they sound horrible too. Is there a natural sounding digital audio for RF amateur use or would that take to much bandwidth?
@@piquat1 those codecs are made to be listen to by ear, they use "psychoacoustic effects". well trunking" modes are "just" data network (like wifi) + voip on top, so it is possible to stream ANY data over it ... this radio is capable of changing codec (even for G.722.2 or AAC ) +higher bw, hw is capable in every way, just make sw / fw. but you need codec licence.
The firmware does not support encryption of any kind at this point. The protocol supports 2 different encryption schemes: simple scrambling and AES, all key lengths.
A lot of commercial radios (here's looking at you, Motorola) use "specialized" proprietary cables, so there's plenty of precedent. That being said, it would sure be nice to see everybody start switching to a basic USB C interface for both data and charging, as has happened with cellphones. I'm kind of shocked that the Kenwood 2-plug speaker mic connector has survived so long as a standard.
Well, you don't need that cable, manufacturer provides schematics for whole radio, so from that you can make your own cable / just solder to relevant pins / make your own makeshift connection.
@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez LOL .. ya right.. (No thanks) what a mess.. I'll just not buy the radio Until they Redesign the Radio with a Commonly Available USB "C" Cable.
@@x_CrossHair_x usbc connector is more expensive then any other part on that radio.... and how long do you think will that usbc connector last if you have external mic/speaker connected to that usbc connector every day ? or you solution is to have peripherals connector and usbc on top ? why? until android / linux is there then it is not nonsense. like persistent MPU5 android radio.
About £335.29 which is really expensive for a bog standard single band HT that doesn't have APRS regardless of it having M17, it would be cheaper to do a mod on my MD-380
The best part is that everyone is free to propose the code displaying any type of GUI they want. Just write the code and share it with the rest of the world :)
If we all want to sound like Donald Duck - we already have a few digital modes, and at this point in time it's difficult if not impossible to impress us to even try out yet another one. When a digital mode will sound as clean as my $50 Baofeng 82... I promise to invest in it. Until then, buzz off!
You can use LPCNet or EnCodec to greatly improve the voice quality, but I'm not sure you should be using radios at all if you don't understand the point of our hobby.
What D-Star, Fusion, DMR, P25, & NXDN aren’t enough voice digital modes to use? Like the hobby isn’t fragmented enough with all of these digital modes. 1000’s of talk groups and 100’s reflectors with hardly anyone to talk to. I’ve pretty much given up on these modes because I got tired of hunting for activity or listening to dead air space. We needed another digital mode, like we need a hole in the head.
If you cannot see the value that this brings to the hobby, then M17 is probably not for you at this point. To me, it's not just another digital mode to talk to others with, it's a digital mode that the Ham Radio Community can modify, extend and integrate into digital ham comms without licensing issues. Currently, we cannot modify anything on DMR, DSTAR and Fusion, because of licensing. Once the Chinese manufactures start implementing M17, I would expect M17 to grow massively.
@@TechMindsOfficial the only way I’d be into M17 is if the powers that be don’t turn it into the DMR landscape. What I mean is there’s 1000’s of TG’s on who knows how many networks ie Brandmeister, TGIF, FreeDMR. Not to mention all of the private servers that people set up. The problem with most of this digital stuff is everyone wants to be the king of their own fiefdom. Which leaves us people that just want to talk on the radio hunting through dashboard after dashboard looking for people to talk to. Like I said, I got tired of doing just that and it’s why I’ve all but given up on digital modes.
@@truckinguy92 yeh I know what you mean. I think that’s why groups like Hubnet and FreeStar work well, they have lots of modes and repeaters all linked together, so there is a central place we can have a QSO using digital or analog.
You seem to miss the whole point of ham radio: experimentation and openness. M17 gives you both at the same time. Good luck expanding the capabilities or sending arbitrary payloads with DMR or P25.
I really can’t see the point. The digital radio scene is already far too divided. This is just another 4FSK system with a non-proprietary codec. And the audio sounds just as bad as all the others.
Well it is because every (expletive) "ham" is selling nonsensical "ultimate" antenna (just piece of wire ) or (expletive) digimodem (which is just 50 cents STM / AVR cpu ) instead of starting to think in sdr and programming as a fundamental thing for this hobby and providing real value. "we" could had awesome things, but "we" are still doing and promoting things which were tech obsolete in 2000s...
for example lookup persistent systems MPU5 radio (non ham) , it has fullblown CPU with android running on it (android is linux and linux has all networking stuff, all codecs, all everything already) and they just make it into one body with different radio modules... but of course price is 10k+ but it is different thinking about how to do radios. just make it like mobile phone but different freqs... why is that hard.
I disagree. I’m building my third HF SDR transceiver from scratch so I’m hardly stuck in the last century. But with DMR and DSTAR and Fusion we don’t need any more digital modes on VHF/UHF. We actually need less
@@rogertrett406 new digital modes spawn all the time, that's the point - experimentation. Just like you spawn more HF radios. There's enough space for everyone in this hobby.
Currently, the M17 is neither better nor cheaper. So, in my opinion, it cannot be an alternative to DMR. It would be much more important to move towards developing our own open-source radio devices, and initially, this was also the goal of the M17, but unfortunately, it has not been fulfilled.
The price is a rip-off, and the only reason to use a cable like that is to imitate Motorola. The font makes it look like a bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese clone.
That type of connector is easier to seal against moisture, allows the connection to be sealed as well so moisture doesn't affect the contact while in use, takes up less space internally than audio jack style connectors, and is significantly more physically secure,. That doesn't make it better or worse than any other connection standard, unless you're looking for those features, but it is arguably better at meeting those requirements than some connector styles in common use.
9:29 that droidstar to cs7000 sounded fabulous. I can’t wait to get an M17 radio!
Great video as always. I found the video instructive, particularly concerning the audio quality of the mode.
M17 is the future of ham digital modes. No proprietary license/chip that limits what we can do!
People won't be attracted by the fact that there's an open-source codec running under the hood, but by what services they get and at what price
This is awesome. M17/freeDV/codec2 is pretty great and unlike *all* the others it doesn't require licensing which is how it should be for amateur radio, especially since it works as well it's better. With a little luck one of the larger makers will notice, or even Bridgecom or Quansheng. Hey Alinco, I have an idea for you.
Thanks for this video. Wasn’t aware of M17, but I am very familiar with Connect Systems as I have or have had five of their radios. I’ll have to investigate this mode and maybe modify my RT3S or UV380 to experiment with this mode.
Modifying gives you a handheld with M17 support, but the voice quality is crap when compared to what Module17 or CS7000 offers.
Please demonstrate the accessibility features. I'd like to hear the speech output and learn if you can store a channel without using the display. WB3CAI
It would be nice if it could handle the DMR, FM, and M17.
What does it currently support?
One of my first DMR radios was a CS580. Loved it, but not enough accessibility. Please make another video showing the accessibility. My friend Joe VK7JS worked on voice prompts for Open RTX.
I've following the CS7000-M17 dev via the M17 Project Matrix channel - where quite a lot of devs hang out. Have to say that programming cable attachment looks massively clunky to my eyes. Great review and frankly I would love to get one but gonna have to save up for it.
Looks like its heavily Motorola inspired design
@@AndrewR2130 doesn’t it just.
Nice review. This radio looks like the discontinued Motorola XPR-7550e.
@@plutonium76 with a display from a Hytera.
I installed Droidstar onto my 4G smartwatch with microSIM chip. I tried to QSO over M17 but I could only three stations in three weeks. I think the M17 will remain just an experiment. Luckily, I don't have an exorbitantly expensive radio...
Try M17-M17, M17-DMR or M17-HUB.. The last two reflectors will be extremely busy most of time.
thank you
Great technical detail as usual. Off topic, why has nobody demonstrated the capabilities of the Retevis Ailunce HS3 SDR HF/VHF/UHF Transceiver, the price is now US$ 676.99.
I think you may have mis-typed the price because 676 is a wee bit too expensive for a 'cheap' radio?
@@TsiolkovskySportingLocks From a distance, for the specifications the price might be worth it.
@@akeem11h ignore me mis-read the radio name. You are right, you seem to be getting a lot of radio - especially as it seems to be normally retailing for around 1000 USD.
Its the same radio as the Q900 radios. Too many bugs..
@@TechMindsOfficial Will check out the video, thanks.
Fantastic YT thank you. Looking forward to receiving mine soon and experimenting. VA3SII G7HCD
Interesting radio for sure. The one thing is, it cant switch from M17 to DMR without changing the firmware? Is yours a M17 Plus or just the standard M17 model? I see that the Plus can do Dstar, P25 and other protocols too. Hope it isn't all just updating firmware each time.
Connect Systems? There was a company with that name that made repeater controllers in the 70’s and 80’s .
What does M17 offer the ham community that isn't available with DMR?
Serious question. Why choose it over the plethora of DMR radios available?
Apparently there's a small licence fee. But for that matter, isn't D Star supposed to be open?
Decentralized system. Complete openness. No registration required. Digital signatures are available. Easy to implement through libm17, gr-m17 etc.
Why were light bulbs invented when there was a plethora of other light sources available?
On a practical level, what does it offer that DMR doesn't?
M17 may be a purer and truly open system, but I don't see how DMR has suffered from that not being the case?
For example, DMR radios are as cheap as it's possible to make a commercial radio and they are made by a multitude of different manufacturers, the networks are maintained by volunteers, the repeater infrastructure is maintained by volunteers. How is M17 going to make this better?
I'm just not seeing why we need a new extra lightbulb in a room full of lightbulbs?
@@Focal_Paradox M17 was the first mode to use IPv6 - show me a DMR network using it along with DHT. 'Run by volunteers' doesn't mean it is good.
@@batoniarz True, but volunteers for such vast infrastructure are going to come from the same pool of people, probably the exact same people.
Innovation is a good thing, but I'm yet to see the practical benefits from a system that is basically offering the same end user functionality as an existing system.
To cut to the chase, how am I going to persuade my local hams to take this system up over DMR, D-Star, or Fusion?
I get that the hardware geeks might love the innovation and open source nature of it, but to an end user, it's just "another damn radio to buy," to be able to talk to an even smaller subset of hams.
What's it's USP from an end users perspective?
Woeful audio quality.
It’s better in real life and hardware to hardware. I should have recorded the RT3S listening to the CS7000 instead, as the RT3S mod is a bit of a bodge compared to native support.
@@TechMindsOfficial another video coming then ? 😂
Not worse than AMBE.
All of the digital modes I've heard so far sound horrible. Even the video on YT of police, using obviously digital radios, they sound horrible too.
Is there a natural sounding digital audio for RF amateur use or would that take to much bandwidth?
@@piquat1 those codecs are made to be listen to by ear, they use "psychoacoustic effects". well trunking" modes are "just" data network (like wifi) + voip on top, so it is possible to stream ANY data over it ... this radio is capable of changing codec (even for G.722.2 or AAC ) +higher bw, hw is capable in every way, just make sw / fw. but you need codec licence.
Thanks for the review! The link to Wikipedia in the description is broken.
Works okay for me? What happens when you click it?
@@TechMindsOfficial the link misses the closing parenthesis.
Does the current M17 protocol/firmware support encryption for Part 90 use? If not, does anyone know if there are there plans for it to?
The firmware does not support encryption of any kind at this point. The protocol supports 2 different encryption schemes: simple scrambling and AES, all key lengths.
Brutal audio
❤
Is this the same format as Free DV for HF? Are they compatible?
The voice codec-Codec 2-is the same for FreeDV and M17, but the encoding is different and thus the protocols are not compatible.
Those are different protocols using different modulation schemes. Also - M17 is for VHF and up.
WOW What a "Specialized" Programming Cable.. (BETER NO LOSE THAT).. Probably a replacement will be $$$$$
A lot of commercial radios (here's looking at you, Motorola) use "specialized" proprietary cables, so there's plenty of precedent. That being said, it would sure be nice to see everybody start switching to a basic USB C interface for both data and charging, as has happened with cellphones. I'm kind of shocked that the Kenwood 2-plug speaker mic connector has survived so long as a standard.
Well, you don't need that cable, manufacturer provides schematics for whole radio, so from that you can make your own cable / just solder to relevant pins / make your own makeshift connection.
@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez LOL .. ya right.. (No thanks) what a mess.. I'll just not buy the radio Until they Redesign the Radio with a Commonly Available USB "C" Cable.
@@x_CrossHair_x usbc connector is more expensive then any other part on that radio.... and how long do you think will that usbc connector last if you have external mic/speaker connected to that usbc connector every day ? or you solution is to have peripherals connector and usbc on top ? why? until android / linux is there then it is not nonsense. like persistent MPU5 android radio.
About £335.29 which is really expensive for a bog standard single band HT that doesn't have APRS regardless of it having M17, it would be cheaper to do a mod on my MD-380
It is too expensive - I agree. The voice quality is better, tho. APRS support and sat tracking might come later.
The price is too high.
Yep, but CSI won't get it down until some other manufacturer decides to release their own M17 radio.
@@batoniarz Right! But I am happy with my modified MD380 and the Module 17.
@@batoniarzWhy is the M17 project no longer aiming to develop an open source tansceiver?
@@gaborm4767 it is, but we are under-resourced. OpenHT stalled with no help coming from the community.
What's M17?
Its been many years now and everyone has heard of M17 but where is the activity ?
Everywhere.
Looks like it needs more work on the M17 user interface. when it was in DMR firmware it had a much better looking one.
The best part is that everyone is free to propose the code displaying any type of GUI they want. Just write the code and share it with the rest of the world :)
lol i know there's only so many ways to make a handheld, though they didnt even try to hide the resemblance to the xpr7550 lmao
If we all want to sound like Donald Duck - we already have a few digital modes, and at this point in time it's difficult if not impossible to impress us to even try out yet another one. When a digital mode will sound as clean as my $50 Baofeng 82... I promise to invest in it. Until then, buzz off!
You can use LPCNet or EnCodec to greatly improve the voice quality, but I'm not sure you should be using radios at all if you don't understand the point of our hobby.
No 2 meter band??
Not yet.
What D-Star, Fusion, DMR, P25, & NXDN aren’t enough voice digital modes to use? Like the hobby isn’t fragmented enough with all of these digital modes. 1000’s of talk groups and 100’s reflectors with hardly anyone to talk to. I’ve pretty much given up on these modes because I got tired of hunting for activity or listening to dead air space. We needed another digital mode, like we need a hole in the head.
They had no qualms about poaching Motorola XPR7550 case design right down to the mic connector and Hyrera’s screen design and icons.
If you cannot see the value that this brings to the hobby, then M17 is probably not for you at this point. To me, it's not just another digital mode to talk to others with, it's a digital mode that the Ham Radio Community can modify, extend and integrate into digital ham comms without licensing issues. Currently, we cannot modify anything on DMR, DSTAR and Fusion, because of licensing. Once the Chinese manufactures start implementing M17, I would expect M17 to grow massively.
@@TechMindsOfficial the only way I’d be into M17 is if the powers that be don’t turn it into the DMR landscape. What I mean is there’s 1000’s of TG’s on who knows how many networks ie Brandmeister, TGIF, FreeDMR. Not to mention all of the private servers that people set up. The problem with most of this digital stuff is everyone wants to be the king of their own fiefdom. Which leaves us people that just want to talk on the radio hunting through dashboard after dashboard looking for people to talk to. Like I said, I got tired of doing just that and it’s why I’ve all but given up on digital modes.
@@truckinguy92 yeh I know what you mean. I think that’s why groups like Hubnet and FreeStar work well, they have lots of modes and repeaters all linked together, so there is a central place we can have a QSO using digital or analog.
You seem to miss the whole point of ham radio: experimentation and openness. M17 gives you both at the same time. Good luck expanding the capabilities or sending arbitrary payloads with DMR or P25.
Another digital audio protocol I won't be using due to the poor audio quality.
And the price is.... $300. The plus version is $450
We have no influence on the price.
I really can’t see the point. The digital radio scene is already far too divided. This is just another 4FSK system with a non-proprietary codec. And the audio sounds just as bad as all the others.
Well it is because every (expletive) "ham" is selling nonsensical "ultimate" antenna (just piece of wire ) or (expletive) digimodem (which is just 50 cents STM / AVR cpu ) instead of starting to think in sdr and programming as a fundamental thing for this hobby and providing real value. "we" could had awesome things, but "we" are still doing and promoting things which were tech obsolete in 2000s...
for example lookup persistent systems MPU5 radio (non ham) , it has fullblown CPU with android running on it (android is linux and linux has all networking stuff, all codecs, all everything already) and they just make it into one body with different radio modules... but of course price is 10k+ but it is different thinking about how to do radios. just make it like mobile phone but different freqs... why is that hard.
I disagree. I’m building my third HF SDR transceiver from scratch so I’m hardly stuck in the last century. But with DMR and DSTAR and Fusion we don’t need any more digital modes on VHF/UHF. We actually need less
@@Jamey_ETHZurich_TUe_Rulez have you seen our (M17 Project's) Remote Radio Unit? Google it.
@@rogertrett406 new digital modes spawn all the time, that's the point - experimentation. Just like you spawn more HF radios. There's enough space for everyone in this hobby.
who got an ad too when watching this Tech Minds
Everyone gets ads unless you have a TH-cam premium account. Unless they use a blocker and then they are a to**er lol.
It sounds just as bad as DMR, C4FM, and DSTAR. In my opinion, too many of these technologies have been created, unnecessarily dividing the community.
Too many? Show me a single mode out there with such a large number of open-source implementations, and with extensible, open specification.
Currently, the M17 is neither better nor cheaper. So, in my opinion, it cannot be an alternative to DMR. It would be much more important to move towards developing our own open-source radio devices, and initially, this was also the goal of the M17, but unfortunately, it has not been fulfilled.
Why didn't you join the effort of creating one?
The price is a rip-off, and the only reason to use a cable like that is to imitate Motorola. The font makes it look like a bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese clone.
you don't think its a high price because it is a low volume production run product where economies of scale just don't come in to things?
The price will go down after other manufacturers join the game.
That type of connector is easier to seal against moisture, allows the connection to be sealed as well so moisture doesn't affect the contact while in use, takes up less space internally than audio jack style connectors, and is significantly more physically secure,.
That doesn't make it better or worse than any other connection standard, unless you're looking for those features, but it is arguably better at meeting those requirements than some connector styles in common use.