Why am I thinking so much about Digital Voice modes?

I have a project I would like to do...  I want to be able to remotely lock/unlock my car, remotely start the car in the morning, and to be notified remotely if the alarm is going off.  Some commercial products do some of those things; Certainly, the locking, unlocking, and remote starting are easy... As long as I'm in range of a key fob transmitter.  In the modern era, even the rest of it is doable, given cell phone technologies (See the Chevy commercials that allow you to do all of that from your smartphone.)  But what if the car is outside of my office building, and I'm working on the far side and can't hear the alarm?  Or if I'm in a building that doesn't have cell service? Or if I'm at the mall, and I want the car warm when I get there?

Ham radio transmitters have more power than the keyfobs, and would probably solve some of these problems;  Ham radio repeaters often have better coverage than cell towers, and would also largely solve the problem; The APRS network, as one example, has entirely decent national coverage, and can relay messages across RF and the internet to get a message across the country.  Clearly, to get what I want, I need something from the amateur market.

SO, a couple of years ago, I started researching various digital modes for this purpose...  POCSAG was nice, as it can provide the telecommand services I need... However, it's one directional, and the car wouldn't be able to report back it's success on a command, or tell me of a problem.  APRS is bi-directional, and supports telemetry and text messages... I could build an interpretter that could use text messages as commands...  But it's certainly not very battery efficient...  Maybe a combination of the two: POCSAG for telecommand, APRS for telemetry...  Keep the pager on all the time, but the APRS only boots up in the case of an event.

But then the idea of D-STAR occurred to me... It's getting good press, it supports voice and text messages, and it is designed for amateur radio; It's neat, because it carries your callsign as the radio ID, and can do call routing based on your callsign. However, through research, I found that the equipment isn't very well built, as Icom doesn't have any competition in the market... And the spec is poorly written, with the FEC in the datastream, NOT the voice stream, perpetuating lost packets and slow resync on the fringe of each repeater's coverage.

ETSI DMR, and particularly MotoTRBO, seemed to solve those design failures, and was just downright awesome, with 2-timeslot TDMA, and built in telemtry and telecommand.  The only downside was the lack of datastream callsign radio IDs...  Leading to some questionable legal issues in my project.

Also, in all cases, the price is absurd.  I can't afford it, none of my friends can afford it, and to make my project work, I would need to buy TWO radios just to have no one to talk to...

Yet, I am following all of these forums about D-STAR, D-STAR GMSK Nodes, MotoTRBO, DMR-MARC, etc.  I could BUY a MotoTRBO radio, add a GMSK node, and have DMR, D-STAR, and analog all in one radio, all for less than the cost of one of each!  But... I still wouldn't have anyone to talk to... And it would be rediculous overkill for my car project.

The fact of the matter is that I can't afford any of those radios... None of my friends can, either... And if I can't talk to my friends, I'm just not interested.  Further, if I can't use them in the back country, when I'm stuck in the snow and need a recovery, then it's pretty much useless.

My emotional mind is super curious and wants to build a D-STAR gateway at home...  But my logical mind tells me that doing so would be a waste of time and money.  I want to be on the cutting edge, but in the real world, I just need what works... At at this moment, FM voice is what works.

As for my car project...  It will stay on the back burner for a while...  And if I ever get around to doing it, the POCSAG telecommand / APRS telemetry idea is probably my best bet.   I just wish I could get myself to emotionally calm down about this digital voice stuff...