M17 is a digital radio modulation mode developed by Wojciech Kaczmarski (amateur radio call sign SP5WWP) et al. M17 is primarily designed for voice communications on the VHF amateur radio bands, and above. The project received a grant from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications in 2021 and 2022. The protocol has been integrated into several hardware and software projects. In 2021, Kaczmarski received the ARRL Technical Innovation Award for developing an open-source digital radio communication protocol, leading to further advancements in amateur radio.
Learn more about Kaczmarski on his QRZ page: https://www.qrz.com/db/SP5WWP
The M17 Project stands on the open source character of this protocol:
M17 is developing open source hardware, software, and offers a complete digital radio protocol for data and voice, made by and for amateur radio operators. Our protocol’s voice mode uses the free and open Codec 2 voice encoder. This means there are no patents, no royalties, and no licensing or legal barriers to scratch-building your own radio or modifying one you already own.
Why should you care?
As the M17 Project stated, open source gives you freedom: freedom to enjoy, freedom to innovate, and freedom to use the M17 protocol. M17 is about unlocking the capabilities that amateur radio hardware should already have.
Since there are no patents, royalties, or licensing costs, the high cost of entry into digital communications may be significantly reducing. This allows more radio amateurs to enter this part of the hobby and enjoy clear digital communications around the world.
How to get involved
You can certainly get involved in some of the software projects related to M17, like merfd and gomerdash.
You can participate in an M17 users group on Groups.io. Says Steve Stroh N8GNJ:
There’s an email list for M17 users – https://groups.io/g/M17-Users. I created that list about a year ago after I’d come to the conclusion (in a series of articles on M17 in Zero Retries) that M17 was essentially ready to go for “mainstream” use – there were radios, repeaters, reflectors, modems, etc. No one had quite put all the pieces together. So I started m17-users for us ordinary users to discuss usage of M17.
You can also become involved with the M17 Foundation. They say:
Our goal is to provide the amateur radio community with quality, open-source software and hardware solutions. As the name suggests, we are focused on supporting the M17 digital voice protocol, along with its open-source software and hardware implementations.
The M17 Foundation is sponsoring the M17 Conference 2025 in Poland, occurring the weekend before the Zero Retries Digital Conference in Everett, Washington.
The creation of M17 occurred recently and innovation continues. This is a great moment to become engaged with M17. You can use M17 right now. You can build, contribute to code, and come up with new ways of using this open protocol. If you believe, like I do, that M17 is good for our amateur radio hobby, you can also help support the M17 Foundation with a donation.
Your contributions matter: use the M17 protocol, spread the word, build radios, write code, expand the uses of M17, or donate funds.