This was spotted on a D-Star Yahoo group:

Hi Everyone,

In case you do not know me, I am President of Connect Systems Inc. and I am responsible for getting to HAM market a commercial grade DMR radio for $180. This is about 1/4 the price you would pay for a New Motorola 6550 MotoTRBO radio. Beside running the company I am also a design Engineer.

I few days ago I had a long conversation with Mark Thompson (WB9QZB) and he convinced me I should seriously look into developing a DSTAR radio in competition with ICOM that has a selling price to HAMS for less than $200. He supplied me with three Documents named “D-STAR Uncovered”, “D-STAR System”, and “D-STAR radio packet structure for the Digital Voice (DV) mode. I studied the documents and at first glance I came to the conclusion that the development of this type of Radio is much simpler than either NXDN or DMR. So now I am seriously looking to develop the radio.

I have four questions I would like to ask. Put on the subject matter the word D-STAR someplace if you would like to e-mail me at jerry _at_ connectsystems.com

Question 1

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What features would you like me to add to this radio that is not already in the ICOM radio?

Question 2

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Given a choice for a commercial grade D-Star radio for about $200 (Such as Motorola or Kenwood quality) or an amateur grade D-STAR radio for about $30 less (Such as Wouxun) quality), which would you pick?

Question 3

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Is there any software (Source Code) available that I could look at that would show how to design the radio part of a DSTAR System. Even better if someone made a working breadboard of a D-STAR radio.

Question 4

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Is there anyone who completely understands the protocol of D-STAR down to the bit level?

Thanks in advance for answering these questions.

Jerry Wanger

President

Connect Systems Inc

www.connectsystems.com