--- In dstar_digital@yahoogroups.com, "n9aa" <scott.man...@...> wrote: > Reduce the $$$ barrier? The D-Star chip costs about $25. No one is going to > be able to manufacture an open source vocoder chip for less than that.
I can implement a vocoder in a commonly available 32-bit microcontroller for roughly, hold on, let me check... ah yes, quantity 100 that'd be $13.35 thank you very much. And said microcontroller could also run the rest of the radio. The problem is that I legally *can't* implement a D-Star-compatible vocoder that way... BTW, the cost of the extra vocoder chip is only part of the cost involved in making a radio D-Star compatible. There is also the cost of the larger battery and charge circuit needed to power this extra chip, the cost of the additional circuit board layers needed to cram an extra chip into common radio formfactors, and so forth. If ICOM had chosen something other than AMBEC, none of this would be a problem... but apparently they felt taking a short cut and gluing an extra chip into their designs was worth more to them in terms of quicker design turnaround than the alternative of finding a provider who was willing to license an algorithm for a reasonable cost that could be integrated into the main CPU of the radio.
