in my experience, AD’s chips are usually much more expensive from digikey than direct from AD (the ad8397, for example, is also about twice as much). The only problem, though, is that it’s cheaper only if you can buy 260 of them at once. You might be able to find the chips cheaper from Newark, but from what I’ve heard, they usually make up for their cheaper prices (and more) from their rather outrageous shipping costs.

Posted at 6:35 pm on Jun 14th, 2007 by threepointone

This is a neat project but I can’t help to notice how much it looks like a bomb, I think it is the battery pack hanging off the side that does it.

Posted at 2:17 am on Jun 15th, 2007 by Alan Parekh

$6 a piece, $3.8 in quantity, or $2.85 from AD.

eh that sucks but not as bad as these 47uF 1812 caps I’ve used. $7.5 in singles, $1.20 ea in a reel :P

Posted at 2:51 am on Jun 15th, 2007 by japroach

#2 holy shit what’s so special about the caps?

Posted at 7:43 am on Jun 15th, 2007 by akmixdown

big capacity smd

Posted at 10:40 am on Jun 15th, 2007 by RusH

It’d be cool if the batteries were in the box. Maybe make a custom battery holder to hold 2 batteries on each side of the board.

Posted at 12:34 pm on Jun 15th, 2007 by A. Zimlich

I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. I’ve been stuck using spread spectrum, and a vocoder to keep RF channels discreet. If I could get digital to transmit correctly I could implement a encrypted protocol that works like AX.25 and triple DES like they use on satellite.

Room bugs and inductor taps wouldn’t be so open to wisers ether..lol

Posted at 2:15 pm on Jun 15th, 2007 by TJHooker

I never quite know where to put batteries in my projects they always end up hanging off the side too.

Posted at 3:12 pm on Jun 15th, 2007 by wolfmankurd

As a licensed radio operator in the USA, i have to say i love this project. Why purchase a $200 radio and a $180 module to use DStar, when i could build one (even if building it cost more). Cool project.

Posted at 9:38 am on Jun 17th, 2007 by neal

It’d be even better if there was an ASIC solution that did most of the work, with 1MB of internal FLASH for firmware.

Responding so elegantly with no obvious intrigue is pretty Dick Smith…LOL

Posted at 1:50 am on Jun 18th, 2007 by TJHooker

I’ve got an IC-91A so I’ll be following this closely, sounds like their working on an updated version with a better user interface. heres hoping.

Posted at 4:04 am on Jun 18th, 2007 by JWebber