For those of you who do not know what a Peanut is, well it is a legume used to making a smooth or crunchy snack food. It is also the invention of PA7LIM, David, who put together a clever little application that many found to be awesome.
Essentially, Peanut (the application software for Android phones), connected users to D-star and also custom chat reflectors without requiring the ham to buy a D-Star radio. Here is a link to the website.
The Peanut Android Phone Application Screenshot
Once registered, the licensed ham could connect to a number of XRF reflectors also with REF 030C and language-based reflectors like Korean, Swedish, etc. The convenience and ease of use was astounding, and that also led to a "social" problem.
A friend of mine thinks that the quality of the ham operators is inversely related to the ease of entry into the particular mode. What that means is that the biggest lids in ham radio are attracted to awesome little apps like Peanut because they can get in for free. In fact, REF030C was disconnected from Peanut fairly quickly after some turkeys abused their status as licensed hams and proceeded to behave like "turkeys" on the air using Peanut. Shortly thereafter, D-Star shut down the connection from Peanut to REF030C.
However, the other sites remained active, and they worked very well. The audio is excellent, and although it is not what I consider to be "real" ham radio, nevertheless, it is a chance to talk to your friends using D-star without the cost.
According to David, PA7LIM, the creative genius behind Peanut, he no longer has the time to manage and code changes in Peanut due to the fact that his family is not getting the attention they deserve and need. Therefore, he will rightly choose to shutdown Peanut in few days in order to spend more time with his family. A proper decision.
Now that Peanut is about to shutdown, we can ask ourselves, what can we do to ensure that projects like Peanut survive. At last word, something like 5000 plus users had registered for Peanut. That is a lot of users to sign up in such a short period of time. In my opinion, Peanut should be an app with a price tag. A brand new D-star radio is going to cost a good chunk of change. So why not charge the user a $3 a year fee to register with Peanut.
Charging a fee would kill two birds with one stone. The first is that it would allow PA7LIM to justify the time working on the project and coding. The second is that many of the "lids" who treated Peanut and D-Star like CB radio will avoid Peanut because of the $3 fee.
Ham radio operators are some of the most talented and creative people out there. Not all hams, but a significant number are 1st-rate technicians, coders, and engineers. In the future, I think that we should consider supporting projects like Peanut with a few bucks to make sure that good products will stay alive and provide a great service. Let's keep that in mind when the next "Peanut" project shows up.
73 Mark 4x1ks
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