Tag: XLX

New YSF Capabilities on XLX020

The Yaesu Fusion radios have a new capability when used with Pi-Star and an XLX reflector. You can now use the transmit DGID to talk on any of the enabled modules. Here is how it works.

Configure your Pi-Star instance to enable WiresX Passthrough.

Use the Wires-X function of your radio to connect to the XLX reflector of your choice. For example, XLX020 is #66396.

Set your transmit DGID to the number representing the module you wish to talk on. For example, Module A is DGID 10. Module D is DGID 13. See this link for the full list of modules.

Thanks to all those behind XLX and Pi-Star for making this feature available. YSF and XLX are now better than ever!

Connect to XLX as XLX!

Yes, you can connect to an XLX reflector with D-Star without having to use an XRF or DCS connect string! This is a supported feature of ircDDBGateway (which is leveraged by the Pi-Star distribution).

If you’re running a recent version of ircDDBGateway (such as the one in Pi-Star 4.1 releases), you can connect via an XLXnnnmL type command.

In this case nnn is the 3 digit reflector number and m is the module letter.

For example:

XLX020AL

ircddbgateway will then use DCS to make the connection to connect to module A of reflector XLX020.

For this to work properly, be certain that the following is set in your ircddbgateway config file:

xlxHostsFileUrl http://xlxapi.rlx.lu/api.php?do=GetXLXDMRMaster

You can check this in the Pi-Star expert mode configuration for ircDDBGateway.

73

Icom Terminal Mode on XLX020

There’s an exciting new development in the XLX reflector world. XLX reflectors now officially support Icom Terminal Mode. If you’re not familiar with terminal mode, it allows you to communicate with the DSTAR world via the internet from your radio. No separate hotspot or dongle is required and since RF is not used, no antenna either.

Terminal mode is supported by the newer Icom radios, including the IC-9700, ID-4100, and the Plus model HTs. If you have a radio that supports terminal mode and want to give it a try, set the host to xlx020.k2ie.net.

Thanks to Marius (YO2LOJ) for cooking up the code and submitting it to the xlxd project. It is great to see that the open source model is helping to advance digital amateur communications.

73 de K2IE

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

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

You Say Protocol, I Say Reflector…

Is XLX a protocol? Is it a type of reflector? Why are we asking these questions?

There is a bit of a debate going on now in D-Star circles as to how the end user (you OM or YL) of a hotspot or repeater should connect to an XLX reflector. I’ve exchanged emails with some notable folks in amateur radio software development circles (Luc LX1IQ, Andy MW0MWZ, and Tom N7TAE) on the subject. The software developers are all in agreement. XLX is not a protocol, it is a type of reflector. On that point, they are quite correct.

To varying extents, each have indicated that the preferred way to access a reflector is via the protocol, node and module notation. Using this paradigm, to access XLX020A via DExtra protocol, you’d connect to XRF020A. But there could be an XRF020A that is not XLX020A. We’ll get to that in a couple of paragraphs.

On the other hand, Jonathan Naylor (G4KLX) has implemented the ability for ircDDBGateway to access XLX reflectors by name. Since all XLX reflectors support DCS protocol and DCS is the most modern of the three D-Star reflector protocols, ircddbgateway defaults to DCS connections. This make perfect sense to me. And it works!

Note: In case you did not know, ircDDBGateway is part of the software suite that comprises the exceedingly popular Pi-Star distribution. May of the tools provided as part of Pi-Star were developed by G4KLX.

As an end user of a hotspot or repeater, I just want to connect. There is also the problem of amgibuity. You can have an REF123, an XRF123, a DCS123, and an XLX123. They may or may not be the same destination. But XLX123 is a specific destination, as are the other three. So the best way to connect to an XLX reflector for the end user would be to allow the end user to specify that destination.

To continue to require that XLX connection requests specify a particular protocol, when there is no specific reason to do so, would be as confusing as requiring the end user of a mobile phone to specify what network the called party is connected to. Yes, the option is there, but let’s make this simple.

I’d like to see the various hotspot platforms adopt this aproach. What do you think?

73 de K2DLS


XLX Support Updates

There are a couple of big announcements to make in terms of support for the XLX reflector world this week.

The first development is that Kenwood has released firmware version 1.09 for the popular D74A handheld transceiver. Among the improvements contained in this release is direct support for selecting XLX reflectors by name on the “Link to Reflector” menu.

The second development is that Andy Tayor <MW0MWZ>, developer of the extremely popular Pi-Star hotspot software distribution for the Raspberry Pi, has made a change that allows the radio operator to directly select an XLX reflector. Previously, you would have to make a local host table override entry for an XRF or DCS reflector in order to make this work.

06-28 Alert: After some more testing, it seems that the Pi-Star change to allow connection via the XLX name isn’t working properly. Testers experienced one way audio with the initiator of the connection not hearing the remote end.

07-11 Update: XLX Linking is now working, with some tweaks to the ircddbgateway config. See this thread on the Pi-Star Forum for more info.

XLX reflectors just got a whole lot better thanks to these updates!

73 de K2DLS

N5BOC Duplex Hotspot

I managed to get my hands on one of the hot items in the MMDVM world — an N5BOC Duplex Hotspot. This is really a mini-repeater which uses both timeslots on DMR and has a separate transmit and receive antenna connector. Initial results have been as expected — excellent!

My idea was to have a hotspot where I could configure XLX on TS1 and Brandmeister on TS2. With the N5BOC board and Pi-Star this was a breeze. The key is in the DMR Gateway configuration.

My XLX configuration:

[XLX Network]
 Startup=020
 Enabled=1
 File=/usr/local/etc/XLXHosts.txt
 Port=62030
 Password=passw0rd
 ReloadTime=60
 Slot=1
 TG=6
 Base=64000
 Relink=60
 Debug=0
 Id=1234567
 UserControl=1
 Module=A

My Brandmeister configuration:

[DMR Network 1]
 Enabled=1
 Address=107.191.99.14
 Port=62031
 TGRewrite0=2,9,2,9,1
 PCRewrite0=2,94000,2,4000,1001
 TypeRewrite0=2,9990,2,9990
 SrcRewrite0=2,4000,2,9,1001
 PassAllPC=2
 PassAllTG=2
 Password="passw0rd"
 Debug=0
 Name=BM_United_States_3101
 Id=123456701

If you’re not currently using DMRGateway, make sure that you have activated it by setting the DMR Master on the configuration page to DMR Gateway. This will reveal options to help you manage Brandmeister, DMR+, and XLX, all on the same hotspot.

Pi-Star Configuration for XLX020

Some simple changes must be made to the configuration of a Pi-Star based hotspot before it can access an XLX Reflector. Thanks to our partner in the “020 Project”, Scott <KB2EAR>, who helped with following guidance.

To connect to XLX020 via DMR you must configure your Pi-Star hotspot to use DMRGateway. Before you begin, make sure you hit the update button on the Pi-Star menu.

If you have not yet enabled DMRGateway, you will find the DMR Configuration looking something like this:


To enable DMRGateway change DMR Master to DMRGateway (very top entry).

Click apply changes and wait for the menu to come back up. Next change XLX Master to XLX_020. XLX Startup Module will usually be either A (Central New Jersey) or C (Beyond New Jersey, including REF020A & Peanut users). Turn on the XLX Master Enable slider.

Click apply changes. Once the configuration above has been applied you should be ready to go. Next, program the radio.

To talk via DMR on an XLX reflector, you’ll need to use a channel programmed with TG 6. Also set up a receive group list with TG6 so you will receive signals from the hotspot.

If you want to move your hotspot between reflectors and modules, commands are sent via a private call. These should be entered into your digital contact list.

6 Group Call - Talk on the XLX Reflector
64000 Private Call - Disconnect Channel
64001 Private Call - Switch to Module A
64002 Private Call - Switch to Module B
64003 Private Call - Switch to Module C
64004 Private Call - Switch to Module D
64005 Private Call - Switch to Channel E
64006 Private Call - Switch to Channel F
...
64026 Private Call - Switch to Module Z
65000 Private Call - Query Status
68020 Private Call - Connect to XLX Reflector 020

XLX020A XLX020D is the gateway to the CNJHAM/TG31340 bridge.

XLX020C XLX020A is the gateway to the REF020A/TG31675 bridge.

See you in 020 land.

73