Icom offer a low cost adapter to facilitate full PC control of their DSTAR Radios. Imagine changing the UR or Repeater settings in an ID800 on the run. Or actually being able to SEE the display on a 2820 in the car in daylight. Having a shopping list stored in your PC that would use alpha tags for the different fields and let you mix and match UR, RPT1, RPT2 quick and easy. Also since there are more and more repeaters this would facilitate using the same box of UR's and callsigns with different repeater frequencies (and could even automatically add the band character, A, B, C or G).
If the price is right, Icom would have an instant market for 12,800 copies and provided the protocol to communicate with their radios were public, a scad of software developers could offer Icom Dstar Compatible user interface software. Some of the small laptops with a linux operating system are pretty reasonable in cost for a GUI interface. Maybe I am just dreaming, but it seems it is more and more difficult to find anyone able to reply to a call with anything beyond CQCQCQ. (Except the JA folks who don't have reflectors). Making the radio more user friendly would be a giant step in the right direction and promote more use and more product $ales. steve
