The DV Dongle connects to your PC or Apple Mac via a USB port and provides encoding and decoding of compressed audio using the DVSI AMBE2000 full duplex vocoder DSP chip.

AMBE technology is used in all D-Star radios to provide efficient voice transmissions. It is also used in some HF digital protocols by vendors like AOR.

The DVTool application used with the DV Dongle may be installed and run on Microsoft Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X Leopard, or many flavors of Linux.

DV DONGLE sells for $199.99 at your favorite Amateur Radio Supplier.

Visit the DV DONGLESite to l

How To Use DV Dongle and D-Rats

DV Tool Update

If you were watching Twitter last evening, you already know that DVTool-2.0beta5 has been released. Congratulations go to KD4IBD for being the first to pick up the new release after the tweet!

The new release is at http://opendstar.org/tools as:

DVToolInstaller-2.0beta5.exe (for Windows)

DVTool-2.0beta5-mac.dmg (for Mac)

DVTool-2.0beta5-linux.tgz (for Linux)

The Linux version was compiled on Ubuntu 11.10 with pulseaudio support. Let me know how that works on other platforms. Don't forget to remove the brltty package on Linux.

The 2.0beta5 release has many internal changes/fixes and adds a new status line at the bottom of the main window that shows where you are connected and who is talking (even when using other tabs). A mic level meter is also included on the status line.

The Utilities tab now includes support for the DVRec file format that is used with the DVAP and dplus releases for gateways. The DVRec file is readable ASCII text and can be an interesting read to see how dstar works (interesting for geeks anyway :) ).

The Setup/Gateways tab has a new checkbox that allows you to automatically reconnect to gateways when your internet connection is a little flaky. It will try every 10 seconds for 3 attempts before giving up.

For the adventurous, you can now include command line options for automatically opening the DV Dongle, connecting to a gateway, etc.

DVTool [ -open ] [ -device DEVICENAME ] [ -gateway GWCALL ] [ -module GWMODULE ] [ -connect ] [ -autoreconnect ]

This would allow you to create a desktop shortcut that opens the DV Dongle and connects to REF001 module C. :)

Let me know if you have any issues with the new release. This probably will not fix the MacOS/Lion issue that some are experiencing since it looks like the problem is with the FTDI USB drivers.

Happy New Year!

73, Robin AA4RC