Following along the lines of the individual components for smartlinks, I am proposing a component system for communication cyberware since I feel that there is a lot of redundancy in the current system. The rationale begins as follows:

Commlinks can be implanted with both headware radios and telephones at half essence. This would suggest that the radios and telephones share .15 essence in common, since this is the part of the component which is shared with the commlink. For lack of a better term, I am calling this a level 0 commlink (Feel free to suggest alternative names. Since the commlink operates as a scanner, this should also apply for a radio reciever.

Both radios and telephones use subdermal speakers at .1 essence. It stands to reason that the output for these devices could be the same set of speakers. It also stands to reason that they could be routed to cyberears and ignore the speakers all together.

Finally, both radios and telephones should utilize some form of microphone, probably subdermal. While the other items are listed in canon material, this one will need to be introduced as a house rule. I am suggesting a .1 essence to equal the subdermal speakers. All of this leads to the following break down:

Telephone
.15 for Commlink 0
.1 for Subdermal Microphone
.1 for Subdermal Speakers
.15 for Remaining Telephone Components

Radio Reciever
.15 for Commlink 0
.1 for Subdermal Speakers
.15 for Remaining Radio Reciever Components

Radio Transciever (Full Radio)
.15 for Commlink 0
.1 for Subdermal Microphone
.1 for Subdermal Speakers
.4 for Remaining Radio Components

Therefore, a character with both a cyberware radio and telephone should only have an essence loss of .9 (.8 if output is routed to cyberears).

I do need to give credit to those that did earlier work on this subject, however, I chose to run my own numbers since theirs uses SRII rules.

Mix-and-Match Headware

Sub-dermal microphones are canon, they are could sub-vocal microphones and they are .1 essence. P.152 of Man and Machine

I can't seem to find the description in the Man and Machine book, but I remember them being described as being implanted in the throat next to the larynx.

Opps, you're right. I missed them when glancing through the tables in the back, so forget the non-canon part. Everything should be by the book then.

It has been a long while since I played a really cybered up character, I am just trying to figure out what you are trying to do here. Are you trying to reduce the essence cost of the pieces, or reduce the combine essence if you had both installed?

Trying to do what's been done with smartlinks, i think. If they're component-ized, you don't have to buy the bits of tech they share with other devices twice, so you get a discount on multiple component installations. There have been, in the past, various articles posted, mainly for SR1, true, but there were examples in old sourcebooks as well for 'package deal' cyber bundles which ended up cheaper on both money and essence than getting the cyber individually.

I have certainly used this bundling approach in my game, usually an in-game promotion by a specific corp, sort of limited time only offers, that kind of thing.

In this case, a telephone purchased with either of the two radio types will cost the person 0.65 essence instead of 0.9 essence (based on the examples given above - I don't have my books with me to confirm the numbers so i'm trusting to the accuracy of the previous posts!). That's quite a saving, really.

I'm trying to reduce the essence if you have both installed because I feel that you are being penalized for items taken twice.

Opps, I was wrong, again. The sourcebook has subVOCAL, not subdermal microphones. So back to non-canon again

Sounds logical and a good idea, never thought of it. If it works in your game go for it, but I would have to convience my GM to do it, after we look into it more. But the numbers already posted look sound.

Instead of Subvocal+Subdermal, why not go with a Transducer? Half the essence at only 33% increased price (500 more nuyen). Unless the descriptions of headware commgear specifically say they've got Subvocal+Subdermal, which is quite possible if very silly.

The non-mages in my group all have a MiniTransceiver-6 connected through an External Transducer into a Datajack for communication. 0.16 Essence for an alphaware Datajack, and everything else is external.

i usualy just get a datajack and plug it to an poket secretary.
easy as hell.

When I still played gun bunnies, I usually bought a subvocal mic and subdermal speakers and just jacked into my radio/telephone.

By the time I was done cramming all my other necessary cyber, I could never scrape enough meat or money together to splurge on implanted telephones or transceivers.

I also liked the idea of being able to upgrade the radio without needing my head opened.

The transducer is nice, but getting ahold of one always managed to be just outside my reach. Not unlike maglock passkeys.

-Siege

Which is indeed very different from a Transducer connected to the PocketSec...

BTW, are there rules for DNI'ing external equipment somewhere?

May well be, I just can't remember. I thought it was worthwhile to check which would be cheaper: External Transducer or DNI the PocketSec.

That's silly. The Transducer entry in M&M says:

Because it's basically a communications device, not a control device. It has nothing to do with DNI controls of anything, but merely translates thoughts into text and/or speech and vice versa.

Can't you control a Pocket Secretary with regular text commands, then? Does it not work without neural input?

I forget how we did it in our games. One of my characers had a PS hooked to a datajack with the sub-vocal mic, sub dermal speakers and ll the other junk he also had it hooked to a display link so he could see pictures sent or taken with the PS, he could display his calenders and such, but I think he also had a radio and phone installed also, with an encryption thing. His head was a mobile phone office.

I think we had a company invent a DNI PS, it cost considerably more I remember but after awhile almost everyone in the group started to get them.

And that's just silly. If you can feed stuff for the Pocket Secretary to transmit forwards, you can feed it stuff to analyze itself. It would be really stupid to build the thing into two "separate parts", so that the control functions and interface would be totally incapable of touching the transmitted and received data. It would also have to have a completely separate, "dumb" recorder for that data if it was to record any transmitted or received data in that case.

Maybe some low-end stuff would work like that, or pure radios or telephones, but a high-end radio-telephone-computer combo certainly should be capable of accessing the data the transceiver part is handling. Just give the PockSec some command as the first word of the message, and there you go.

Of course, if SR canon says that Transducers can't control any electronics alone, then that's how it is in canon. But it's silly, and I'll house rule/keep house ruling it.

The thing is, Transducers only translates thought to text/speech. They do not interact in any other way with any device. You switch the device on, dial the number, then kick in the Transducer to actually communicate. You need the DNI-based controls (which translates thought to device control) to actually do the switching/dialing/faxing/changing modes/etc, as the Transducer itself doesn't have any way of doing it.

I don't see it as dumb, nor do I see a reason to house-rule the Transducer into some uber-device-controlling-gadget. It is fine as it is for what it does, which is translate text/speech to thought and the reverse.

What exactly stops you from connecting the Transducer to that part of the electronic device that handles command input? For example, if the device could be run on a keyboard, couldn't you connect the Transducer to the main line going from the keyboard to the CPU? Then, if you want to send something through the transceiver, you could think: "Radio send Bogie twelve o'clock over end", and if you wanted to change frequency you could think "Commandmode transceiver frequency switch secondary end". Or something like that.

It's as though you had a microphone on your PC, but the microphone could infallibly translate speech into text format -- you could do almost anything through speech. You could say into the mic "run Cee Colon Slash Program Files Slash Roger Wilco Slash Roger Wilco Dot E-X-E connect port ### dot ### dot ### dot ### connect send Blah Blah I r0x0r over disconnect exit". Or something along those lines.

As far as I know, the Transducer just doesn't talk to machines/devices like that. What you are describing is exactly what DNI Adaption is all about. Doc Funk could probably give you a better response.

It doesn't have to talk with anything. All it has to do is feed the device pure digital text. If the device has a keypad, it should understand simple text.

I disagree, and I have never seen anything in canon to suggest that this is the way a Transducer works. The Transducer in no way interacts with any other device itself, but merely translates the thoughts you are thinking into a communicatable format. The act of remotely feeding the device anything in the way of mental commands, whether text, speech, or machine language falls under the province of DNI.

So what then does the "This unit can also convert spoken words into text for a display link or other linked device." text mean? That it is in fact the DNI'd and Routed "other linked device" that does the translating into text?

It can translate incoming speech (from whatever communication device you have the Transducer linked to) into text that can be displayed on your Image or Data Link. All that means is that it can transpose messages into any format, be it text, thought, or speech. It doesn't give commands to devices. As I said, that is solely the province of DNI.

Devices implanted as Headware are already DNI-adapted to take mental commands. Other implants, and external devices need to be DNI-modified in order to benefit from mental control.

So it can freely transfer speech onto non-DNI'd devices, but it cannot transfer text onto non-DNI'd devices?

It should work like this: You think of something. It goes out through your datajack into the external transducer. The transducer translates it to speech, and then translates it to text. It then feeds this text as such into whatever device it is plugged into. The Transducer doesn't have to know anything about controlling anything. It only does what it's supposed to do anyway: Translate thought into speech, and speech into text, and feed that forward.

Would you allow someone to send an SMS with a Transducer?

I just cannot see the difference between feeding text into a device and giving a device commands. Using my earlier example, connecting the Transducer into whatever line transfers data from the keyboard to the CPU would allow the same text that would otherwise be sent as an SMS to be used as commands, and the Transducer doesn't know the difference. It's still doing the exact same thing as before, it's only sending the data into a different place.

The same difference as between typing this text into this Fast Reply box, or typing it into the DOS Command Prompt. What makes the text from the Transducer incapable of acting as commands?

And if the problem is one of Shadowrun electronic devices not understanding text commands, then all you need is an electronic device capable of putting the Transducer text into good ole ASCII and then plug the thing into a 60-year-old tactical communications kit.

The Transducer in no way interacts with the device itself. It merely is capable of translating the thought to text, which the device sends as it normally would. It has no way of telling the device what to do. A Transducer is merely a replacement for speakers and microphones.

Take the keyboard in front of you. It can translate thoughts into text (in a way!), which the computer can then send through the internet connection to post on Dumpshock. If the computer is not actually turned on, it doesn't matter how much text the keyboard puts out, it won't actually turn the computer on by itself. That requires you to actually hit the on button.

I don't really see why this is such a problem. All the Transducer does is manipulate and transpose raw data into another form of raw data. it does not transmit anything itself. It cannot be used to control any device.

You don't need a Transducer to mentally command any device, whether implanted or not. All that is required is that the device be DNI-adapted (already done with Headware), and that there be a way to transmit your mental commands, which is where the Datajack comes in.

DNI-adaption is relatively expensive (depending on the base price of each device) in Shadowrun, while Transducers are quite cheap. There is no correlation between their two specific tasks.

Hmm... transducer cannot be used to command anything, but it is like a keyboard which is one of the primary input methods for current computing. (you can set the computer up so that it turns on by a keyboard command, but it isn't worth the effort)

The software to allow transducer control should be minor.

[edit]comparisons in this post are not based on game balance or rules, just IO concepts[/edit]

The Transducer does not interact with the device, it interacts with your brain. Your brain interacts with the device, either by commanding a part of your body to manually turn it on/change the setting/activate a feature, or via DNI commands.

I never meant to imply that it is like a keyboard in the way you are saying, which I think you well know. I used the keyboard as an illustration of why it doesn't actually affect the device itself, merely the data sent through the device's communications channels.

fortune, i've got a keyboard with a power button. it wouldn't take a massive modification to your gear to allow it to take commands via transducer--i've got a character who uses his pocsec this way, albiet via a 'trode link. he has to think the word "rosebud", which puts the pocsec into command mode; from there, he's got a list of specific mental commands he can give it--"text", "pix," etc.

i don't see why allowing the transducer to interface with devices is such an issue. it's never actually occured to me that you couldn't.

Because that is not the Transducer's role.

The 'minor adjustment' you would have to make to the computer to allow such a thing is equivalent to DNI-adapting it in the Sixth World.

It's your game(s), so you can do what you like.

Tell me this though...what is the need for DNI-adaption for each device, and all the rules pertaining to it in canon, if a standard Transducer can do the exact same thing with any device, DNI-adaption or not, with no problems and for a hell of a lot less money?

You win. There's obviously no need to DNI anything in Shadowrun as long as you have access to a Transducer. Silly me.

When the normal input style of a device is a text stream, a transducer would logically be sufficient. When the normal input method is (at the gear) a sequence of vectors, you could do that by transducer, but it would be very hard and much slower than you probably want.

Demanding everything be DNI is easier, but excessive for some items.