[aprssig] Text Messaging Radios (a simple use)

[Gregg Wonderly]

Bob Bruninga wrote:
>> If we're going to make a device that 
>> has the connections to the radio to 
>> receive DTMF and display it on an LCD, 
>> why not just make it a text messaging 
>> terminal and have it use APRS?

Where we are at in Amateur Radio is where the cell phone industry was until the 
iPhone appeared on the scene.  Cellphone manufactures thought that people needed 
a phone, and if they added some silly features that barely worked and had simple 
interfaces with simple graphics that they'd sell all they wanted.  Apple figured 
out that what people needed was a portable network terminal that just by chance 
happened to also be a phone.

What Amateur Radio manufactures still believe is that the ability to transmit an 
analog stream is the most important thing about the radio.  They don't 
understand that carrying voice is the least effective communications that exists 
today.

We should be focused completely on digital modulation schemes using software 
defined radios as our pioneering efforts...  Componentized radio systems are 
becoming more and more possible as has already been said.  Do we need to be able 
to make AM radios?  I guess...

I'm not personally interested in doing what's been done already, over and over...

Gregg Wonderly
W5GGW