New services and system examples

Imagine arriving in town as a visitor or on business. Connect a laptop or PDA to your D-STAR handheld, key in a few simple characters, and request a “what’s happening” report from a local D-STAR kiosk server. In seconds, you’re viewing text listing meetings, clubs, electronics stores, and events. Need a weather check? A few more characters and the screen fills with the current report.

The low-speed data ports of D-STAR handheld radios are compatible with the GPS NMEA data interface. With GPS data integrated into the D-STAR digital data stream, your location data is forwarded to the D-PRS server where gateway software connects you to the APRS® reporting system. The interface is built-in to D-STAR radios – no separate TNC and transceiver required!

It’s only natural that D-STAR’s digital voice capabilities will be linked up with the most popular repeater sharing applications, EchoLink® and IRLP. Since your voice is already digitized within the D-STAR system, third party bridges and converters to and from other digital voice systems an obvious and expected future addition.

Since D-STAR’s data looks just like any other Internet data to a browser or Web application, why not use D-STAR’s high-speed data to build a link to your club’s HF station? Want to control your electronics at home? Either high-speed or low-speed D-STAR data can do the job. D-STAR is built to support 21st century tools - the Web, networking, Ethernet, TCP/IP - so free your imagination!

The open D-STAR protocol provides a rich, exciting set of tools with which hams can experiment and build. Icom supports developers with the D-STAR forums at www.icomamerica.com/amateur/dstar – please join this growing community. In addition, Icom is preparing technical support documentation for the developer, such as protocols and interface descriptions.