A short while ago, the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W was announced. The original Pi Zero and the Zero W are widely used in MMDVM based hotspots and the new Zero 2 W is a direct, drop in replacement. The most obvious question is whether you need to replace your Pi Zero with a […]
Category: D-STAR
How to automatically link your Pi-Star hotspot to D-Star or YSFReflectors
I noticed recently that sometimes my D-Star based MMDVM Pi-Star hotspot would unlink itself overnight from any reflector it was linked to and I decided to investigate and see if I could work out a way to automatically link it to a reflector. If I can’t stop my Pi-Star MMDVM from disconnecting then at least […]
How to update and upgrade your Pi-Star based hotspot
There are a couple of methods of updating a Pi-Star based MMDVM hotspot, one upgrades Pi-Star itself and the other method does a full operating system update as well as Pi-Star. The Pi itself automatically runs a process overnight that updates the host file and various other things but this is how to do a […]
How to enable cross band repeater on an Icom ID-5100E
How to enable cross band repeater mode and extended transmit on the Icom ID-5100E
A quick tip for your hotspots
With all the hotspots I have in the house for various modes, I decided to do something about the RF. They all run very low power but they’re only for me to use and I didn’t want the RF escaping the house. I bought a few tiny little dummy loads from eBay and replaced the […]
How to set up a Yaesu System Fusion reflector (YSFReflector)
NOTE – 22nd April 2023I have provided a new version of install.sh, if you have had problems with a ysfreflector.ini error, please start the install again from the first ‘sudo wget’ command. Over the last four or five years I’ve been a regular user of two digital voice modes, D-STAR and DMR. I don’t particularly […]
Building an MMDVM hotspot on a budget
I bought myself a new handheld at the Newark rally earlier this year, an Anytone AT-D878UV to use on DMR. When I went on holiday in October, I took a couple of copies of RadCom with me and in one of them there was a review of my handheld. The author mentioned that he’d used […]
Installing a radio into my car
About a year ago I changed my car and it’s taken a while to get around to fitting the radio into it. I’ve missed having a wireless in the car and recently resorted to keeping a handheld in the glove box so at least I could natter on the local repeater while driving around town. […]
DMR – My thoughts about Digital Mobile Radio
I’ve written a couple of times in the past about various digital voice modes and if I’m honest, I’ve been quite scathing of them. I make no secret of the fact that I’m very happy to use repeaters for local natter but don’t like the idea of linking remote repeaters together via the internet to […]
Are you transmitting illegally on 70cms?
An interesting subject came up on our 70cms voice repeater earlier today following an incident on a local DMR box yesterday and it got me thinking. There are a lot of 70cms repeaters in the UK with input frequencies between 430 MHz and 431 MHz and many people don’t realise that our licence only allows […]
