K2IE – Page 4 – Radio, Tech, Infosec, Politics, Travel and More

Pi-Star, XLX, and YSF

If you thought that the big amateur radio news of the day is that Andy Taylor has pushed Pi-Star 4.1.0 to general release, I’ll have some other news for you in a moment. But first things first.

If you’re already running a 4.1.0 RC (release candidate), please logon to your pi-star device via ssh and issue the following commands:

sudo pistar-update
sudo pistar-upgrade

If you’re running a pre-4.1.0 system, you’ll need to:

Backup your configuration
Download the 4.1.0 image from the Pi-Star website
Unzip the downloaded file
Burn the .img file to an SD card
Copy the zip (don’t unzip) of your configuration backup to the SD card
Boot the new image

The bigger news today is that Andy has pushed the new G4KLX YSFGateway code into the Pi-Star image. This means that you can now directly connect to XLX020 and change reflector modules from your Fusion radio using Wires-X Passthrough commands.

You’ll have to enable the WiresX Passthrough slider on the Yaesu System Fusion Configuration section of the Pi-Star web gui. If you have an FT-70DR or another radio with an upper case only display, enable the UPPERCASE Hostfiles slider in the same section.

The process may vary a bit between radio models. The general idea is that you first initiate a Wires-X sequence to connect to XLX020. Next, you exit Wires-X mode and initiate another Wires-X sequence to connect to the module of your choice. If you just want to talk on module A, the 2nd connect is not necessary as you’ll default to module A.

Some radios, such as my FT-70DR, do not pull down a room list and you have to manually enter the module number. In that case, use 04001 for module A, 04002 for module B, and so on.

Have fun with this great new feature that makes the most of Pi-Star, XLX, and Yaesu Fusion.

73 de K2IE

Amateur Radio Paging

Did you know that radio amateurs have our own paging network? Really, pagers, those slim devices that you carried on your belt back in the 1980s and 1990s. The devices with batteries that would last for weeks!

The Decentralized Amateur Paging Network was built by hams to provide the backend infrastructure to send messages to your personal amateur radio paging device. And if you’re running Pi-Star, you already have what is needed to turn your local hotspot into a POCSAG paging node on the DAPNET!

You also need need a pager. The AlphaPOC 602R seems to be a popular model that will work on the 70cm amateur band. The default paging frequency seems to be 439.9875 MHz and that is what Pi-Star will use unless you change it.

I wanted to play around with ham radio paging but, since I don’t have a ham radio pager available, I improvised. Isn’t that what amateur radio is all about? I wrote a python3 program to take inbound pages to my RIC (pager identification code) and send them to my email. I’ve shared the code on github and invite you to use it, comment, and contribute.

How can you use amateur radio paging? DX spots, APRS weather alerts, and solar activity are a few applications that come to mind. Share your ideas and be sure to send me a page via the us-nj transmitter group.

73 de K2IE

NJ-TRBO Adds CNJHAM TG 31340 to Select Repeaters

Thanks to Bob KC2CWT and Bill N2WNS for getting CNJHAM up and running on a couple of the NJ-TRBO system repeaters. Here’s an updated table of ways to connect.

D-Star Callsign Route	CNJHAM	via Quadnet
D-Star Reflectors	XLX020A, XRF020A, REF020D	XLX020A preferred
D-Star Repeaters	NJ2DG-A NJ2DG-C W2RJR-B	Fulltime
Brandmeister DMR	TG 31340	CNJHAM
NJ-TRBO DMR	TS1/TG 31340 PTT 10 minute timeout	Martinsville, NJ 447.075 Wayne, NJ 439.7875
Fusion YSF	YSF 44977	US CNJHAM DTMF 44977
Wires-X	CNJHAM	DTMF 28255
Fusion Repeaters	DGID 50	Martinsville, NJ 441.4
P25	TG 31340	Pi-Star
NXDN	TG 31340	Pi-Star
XLX DMR	XLX020A	Enable DMRGateway in Pi-Star
XLX YSF	XLX020A	Some Pi-Star config required

73 de K2IE

020 in 2020: An Update on the 020 Project Multiprotocol Digital Network

You may know it as CNJHAM, because that is how it all started. CNJHAM was first implemented as a lone StarNet smart group. CNJHAM then begat XLX020. Hardware transcoding was soon implemented and followed by links to Brandmeister DMR and YSF Fusion. In this new year, we’ve added Wires-X (for connection from Fusion repeaters) as well as P25 connections.

CNJHAM/XLX020A can be reached via the following methods:

D-Star Callsign Route	CNJHAM	via Quadnet
D-Star Reflectors	XLX020A, XRF020A, REF020D	XLX020A preferred
D-Star Repeaters	NJ2DG-A NJ2DG-C W2RJR-B	Fulltime
Brandmeister DMR	TG 31340	CNJHAM
Fusion YSF	YSF 44977	US CNJHAM DTMF 44977
Wires-X	CNJHAM	DTMF 28255
P25	TG 31340	Pi-Star
NXDN	TG 31340	Pi-Star
XLX DMR	XLX020A	Enable DMRGateway in Pi-Star
XLX YSF	XLX020A	Some Pi-Star config required

Whatever the protocol, CNJHAM is Jersey Strong!

73 de K2IE

Siriusly, My Radio Listening Just Improved

I’ve been a Sirius subscriber since before it was Sirius XM and before Howard Stern first fled from teresstrial radio to the birds. I stopped being a regular commuter in 2013 and so my listening time shifted from the car to home.

At one point I mounted a small antenna to the side of the house and listened directly to the satellites. This was soon replaced by my Logitech Squeezebox internet “radio”. At some point, Sirius made some protocol change for the internet streaming that broke the Squeezebox app and there was to be no fix. So I switched to a Grace internet “radio”. Then came another change and the Grace could no longer be used.

I’ve been a Google Home smart speaker user for a couple of years and it always seemed odd that Google and Sirius had not partnered on a solution. Well, Happy Radiomas to me! In November, Sirius XM rolled out Google Home device integration. After setting up the credentials in the Google Home app, Sirius radio fun is now as close as saying “Hey Google, Play Spectrum on Siriux XM”.

Thanks Sirius and Google for making it easy to listen to Sirius in the same way that I listen to many other audio sources. If you are not using your smart speaker to listen to the radio, you’re missing out.

Former shortwave listeners, especially, can find a wealth of programming from around the world. For example, you can get the lastest news from the BBC or updates on the fire situation in Australia from Radio Australia. Make a resolution to explore this capability in the new year and you won’t be disappointed. You can even request, “Hey Google, play the latest Glenn Hauser’s World of Radio podcast.”

73 de K2IE

XLX020 Supports Direct YSF

XLX020 has upgraded to Luc (LX1IQ)’s latest xlxd (2.3.1) software. We now support direct connections via the Yaesu YSF protocol.

Luc is in contact with the distributors of Pi-Star and the OpenSpot to have this capability added to the dashboards. In the meantime, there is a simple change that you can make to your Pi-Star configuration to connection to XLX020.

You’ll have to be willing to edit your Pi-Star /etc/mmdvmhost file. Look for the [System Fusion Network] stanza. You’ll need to change the GatewayAddress to xlx020.k2ie.net and the GatewayPort to 42000. You’ll also need to change LocalPort to 0.

[System Fusion Network]
Enable=1
LocalAddress=127.0.0.1
LocalPort=0
GatewayAddress=xlx020.k2ie.net
GatewayPort=42000
Debug=0
ModeHang=20

See on you Fusion!

73 de K2IE

D74A and XLX Special Character Woes

A fellow New Jersey ham was having the hardest time using my XLX reflector. He could connect to a reflector module. He could hear conversations, but none of his transmissions were making it out over the reflector. Strangely, he had no such problems when using a DPlus reflector. His radio is a Kenwood D74A.

He uses a SharkRF openSpot2 as his hotspot. While helping to search for a solution, I remembered a thread I saw on the Pi-Star Forums. The author complained of not being heard on an XLX reflector via a D74A. The cause and the solution had nothing to do with Pi-Star, but rather it proved to be a quirk with the D74A and the XLX software.

Apparently the D74A allows any character to be entered into the Callsign Extension field. These are the 4 bytes following the “/”. While these characters were orignally made available to support reciprocal operations and portable suffixes, they are now commonly used to identify the type of radio being used. So my D74A callsign is setup as K2IE____/D74A (the underscores represent spaces). My friend’s radio had “@?” in the Callsign Extension field. These unexpcted characters seemed to cause the XLX reflector to ignore the attempted transmission.

The Icom radios support only A-Z and 0-9 in the callsign extension field. The D74A allows lowercase and special symbols too. Don’t use anything other than A-Z and 0-9 in the Callsign and the Callsign Extension fields and you won’t have this problem.

To make things more interesting, the ham who reported this issue is visually impaired. He relies upon the radio’s voice prompts. However, the Kenwood D74A voice prompting system ignored the @? characters completely, so he never had any idea that they were present. Another local ham who was alerted to the special character problem on the D74A spotted the issue and fixed things.

73 de K2IE

D-Star & DMR Interoperability

If you’re a fan of either D-Star or DMR, you have probably noticed the proliferation of multi-protocol gateways. These gateways, such as the XLX020 system, permit users of radios of one type to communication with users of radios of another type. Multiprotocol gateways help to defragement the amateur digital landscape.

However, there can be issues if the transmitting operator is not registered on both systems. Have you been on a DMR radio and seen the transmitting party display as radio id 0? They are a D-Star (or Fusion or P25 or NXDN) operator who has not registered a DMR radio number.

For DMR operators who have not registered with their nearest D-Star gateway, transmissions could even fail to pass through the D-Star gateway to connected D-Star repeaters.

Therefore, k2ie.net highly recommends that all amateurs using any digtial voice mode register for BOTH a DMR radio id and with a local D-Star gateway, whether or not you have a corresponding digital radio.

You can register for a DMR radio ID at http://www.radioid.net. Hams in Europe and Africa should register at http://www.ham-digital.org.

If you’re not sure of your local D-Star gateway, you can follow the instructions at https://www.dstargateway.org/D-Star_Registration.html.

73 de K2IE

K2DLS is now K2IE

My callsign has changed and we are migrating the blog over to http://k2ie.net. Please update all bookmarks that formerly pointed to k2dls.net.

I’ve been asked, “Why did you change your callsign?”

1×2 callsigns are hard to come by, especially one from your own call area. K2IE is an especially easy call for CW use. And, I was a friend and co-worker of the former holder of this callsign, Robert Norton. Unfortunately, Bob became a silent key well before his time.

Bob and I used to talk about radio and he encouraged me to get my amateur radio license. He also provided some insight into the hobby that I draw upon to this day. It is an honor to hold his callsign.

73 de K2IE

Duplex Hotspot Reliability Solution

So you’ve bought a new duplex MMDVM hotspot such as the one from N5BOC. You want to experiment with different DMR networks on each of the timeslots. You’ve set the recommended offset values in the MMDVM Expert settings. Yet every third or fourth PTT press results in a lost transmission. You’re so frustrated you want to throw your radio and hotspot across the room. Sound familiar?

I’ve spent a couple of months chasing down this issue, reading post after article on this subject. The consensus so far has been:

1) Update to the latest firmware.
2) Run the MMDVMcal procedure to minimize the BER.
3) Set the DMR preamble time on your radio to 960 ms.

After weeks of poor results, I came upon the solution that has worked for me (and for others) in a manual for the Anytone 878 produced by Bridgecom. Bridgecom recommends a DMR preamble duration of 100 ms.

1) Update to the latest firmware.
2) Run the MMDVMcal procedure (or enter the sticker offset
   values for RXOffset and TXOffset).
3) Set the DMR preamble to 100 ms.

Well, I was testing on an Alinco MD-DJ5, a radio very similar to the Anytone 878. So I tried the preamble setting (called Wake Head Period in my software).

I have now achieved the mystical “five 9s” of reliability. I press PTT, I talk, my transmission gets received.

Ah, the sweet smell of success… And kudos to Bridgecom for the level of support that provide for Anytone 878 users.

This solution has worked so far with an Alinco DJ-MD5, a Motorola XPR, and a CS-700 (where I had to use 120 ms because the dropdown increments in steps of 60.). Oddly, my Hytera PD-365 does not support values lower than 360.