M17, an open source amateur radio project sponsored by EURAO

[IK0ZCW]

Ven, 12/07/2024 - 23:00 - eurao

At the proposal of its Board, the EURAO Assembly decided to support the M17 project with a modest donation.

In the picture the M17 team at Friedrichshafen, from left to right: SP5WWP, Olha, ON4MOD, IU2KWO and KC1AWV.

This project, based on open-source Codec 2, aims to define a new digital voice (DV) mode for VHF and higher bands.

But, in addition to protocol's development, they realized that there was a large demand for hardware with dedicated (native) M17 support along with RF infrastructure, so they started looking for different hardware solutions and at the HAM RADIO 2024 exhibition they presented some of them.

In the picture below you can see two of these proposals: Module17 and OpenHT. The first one, Module17 (the red box), allows the M17 protocols to be used on equipment that has a 9600 baud connection, as if it were a TNC. The second one, OpenHT (the blue box with a big display) is a proof of concept of a complete QRP SDR handheld transceiver. It supports all analog modes and most of digital too.



The next picture shows a Remote Radio Unit, a piece of hardware to be installed just under the antenna, for an UHF FM repeater. It can support the following modes: analog, AFSK (APRS), M17 and possibly others too.



Here the great team mentioned above: Wojciech, SP5WWP, with his wife Olha; Morgan, ON4MOD; Silvano, IU2KWO; and Steve, KC1AWV. Soon we will talk more about the collaboration with them. Meanwhile, you can visit their website: https://m17project.org/