DS-1 Digital Station
The flagship of the DUTCH*Star line, the DS-1 is a complete
radio transceiver with modular design. The basic transceiver consists of a RF
transceiver module (available are modules for the 2m, 70cm and 23cm ranges;
others may follow) and all other modules required to implement a complete
analog FM transceiver.
It also supports D-STAR, however, by addition of the
DS-1DV module, which is another variant of the Smart Modem.
Practically speaking, the Digital Station is a DT-1 Standalone
Terminal, coupled with a complete radio transceiver in a single
enclosure.
Although the transceiver has all the usual
capabilities of a regular analog-FM transceiver (including repeater
shifts, CTCSS subtone and DCS signalling), it also has some features not
often seen, such as audio scrambling.
The current prototype of the system is being designed
into an EC-1 enclosure, as made by Elecraft Inc. This was in part inspired
by yours truly's wish to stack it on top of his K2/100 tranceiver, but it
also turned out a rather nice enclosure to work with, as it is light, looks
good, and has ample space for all that's going into it.
At the time of writing this, the basic design is ready,
the main board, front panel and CPU cards are done, and the software
(firmware) is running. The user interface was designed (early) by first
creating a Windows version of the keypad and LCD, onto which the user
interface could then be developed. By the time the actual hardware was
ready, the first usable versions of the software was, too. Even today, the
firmware can (and is) cross-tested on this Windows platform- this also
proved to be handy for taking screenshots for inclusion in the manual.
A copy of that software can be downloaded
here, and contains the program itself, the
(fake) EEPROM file, and a simple manual explaining some of the user
interface.
Work on this product will continue after the DM-1 and
DT-1 have been launched.