Jae's Blog Creatures and blogs.

So, I’ve talked about my radio, what I do on DMR, what’s missing now? I know, the hotspot! Before beginning, thanks to the peeps at FinDMR for answering my (probably stupid) questions.

Briefly mentioned before as well, the hotspot is actually the second most important part of DMR in some cases. For instance, if you want to chat on remote talkgroups, it’s generally recommended to do it via a hotspot to avoid clogging up the local repeater. It also gives you more agency on which talkgroups are linked and when.

Personally, I use a Pi-Zero MMDVM hotspot running Pi-Star. It’s tiny, runs with practically nothing, and all things considered is pretty cheap for the things it does. Of course, it’s still an additional cost over the initial investment of buying the radio, but worth it in my opinion.

Configuring the hotspot might seem like an herculean task, but in fact, the BrandMeister wiki has a guidance page for Finland specifically (and there’s a good chance there’s one for your country if DMR is popular there).

In the end, configuring the hotspot properly means:

• Setting it up around 434.4625MHz.
• Setting a colour code other than 1.
• Remember to fill out all the essential info (location, etc).

This is mainly so the hotspot won’t interfere with local repeaters. Other general recommendations are:

• Set the hotspot to “Private” (should be by default) so only yourself can transmit on it.
• Setup AirSecurity in the BrandMeister self-care panel.
  • This is basically TOTP so nobody impersonates you.
  • I can also recommend enabling “Secure local pass”. This basically makes it so you don’t have to authenticate when using your private hotspot.
• Setup the BrandMeister API integration.
  • This will allow you to manage the static talkgroups of the hotspot without having to use the BrandMeister console.

And there you go, it’s that easy. You can now talk anywhere, any time; just remember to shut it down when you’re done.

Mentioned briefly in my previous post about DMR, I am the proud owner of an Anytone AT-D168UV. Even tho it felt like a cheap radio at first, now that I understand more how it works and what the options do, it’s been really fun to operate.

For the brief specs, this model pushes around 5W in VHF and 4W in UHF, with the added benefit of supporting DMR. It also has enough memory to load the full list of DMR IDs (which you can find on the Pi-Star website). What I like the most is the full-colour screen on the device, this is my first handheld device like this.

I got it from another ham for fairly cheap, but it can usually be found for 150-200€ in retail, so not too bad for something DMR. That’s been my main DMR device since getting it, but until recently, I didn’t go around exploring all the settings.

Let’s get this in first: configuring the radio itself from the radio is a hassle, don’t do it. The screen is very cramped, and entering everything manually is going to take forever. Luckily, AnyTone gives us some software to configure it. Bad news is: it’s on Windows only. The Open-Source equivalent, CHIRP, is also awaiting support for this model, which I am hopeful it will get (if any of the CHIRP contributors are reading this, hit me up on my e-mail or Signal if you think I could help).

Right now, we’re gonna need to work around some issues, the first one being: needing Windows. That’s fairly easily solved, I just spun up some Windows 11 VM in GNOME boxes, and it can also pass through a USB device from the VM settings, sweet!

At this point, we’re set to tweak the radio, just one last thing I discovered when experimenting:

• Do not try to create two channels with the same everything but name and set the two in the same zone. This corrupts the settings for some reason, which will force you to re-upload everything.
• Uploading the full DMR ID list takes forever, so be patient. At first, I used a pretty shoddy cable which made the upload fail, so beware of that as well.

It took me some time to figure out how this model works (my only prior experience being cheap Baofeng radios), but got it figured out:

First, add your DMR ID to the list, as it’ll be the one used when transmitting (and that’s pretty important). I am not sure if the master ID does something for ham use, but filled that one as well with the same values.

Then it goes that way: you can add channels, channels have a set frequency to transmit and receive; can have a specific DMR ID, default talkgroup, or CTCSS depending on if you want to hit an analogue relay. Once you have your channels, you need to add them into a zone; a zone will allow you to go through multiple channel with the middle knob on the radio; for instance, I have one setup for my hotspot, Helsinki and Hamburg, all with different local relays. You can change the zone by clicking the up and down arrows on the keypad.

Once this is all setup, time to send to the radio, wait for a bit, and voilà, it’s configured.

Other small bits of config I have tweaked are:

• Power-on interface: Custom Picture (more on that later).
• Standby char colour: white.
• Display channel number: Actual Channel Name.
• B Channel Name Colour: Orange.
• Zone Name Colour A: Green.
• Zone Name Colour B: Yellow.
• Separate display: On.

Now for some fun: you can actually set a custom background when the radio starts, or is on standby. The only restriction is that the picture needs to be 128×160, and JPG (apparently BMP is supported, but wasn’t working during my tests).

Just use the uploader tool in the software, and you’ll have a nice custom background as well.