|
January 7, 2023 Decided to upgrade the website look and feel. Yee-haw! |
|
January 6, 2023 My little ZUMSpot hotspot is still working like a charm. Santa Claus came through for me and delivered an AMBE Server card, so I am working on setting that up. Keeping with my linux focus, I opted to build the DummyRepeater software from github. It can be fun trying to guess the package dependencies but I did manage to have a successful build. Now waiting for D-Star registration. Thought I had already completed that step, but I guess I didn't configure a terminal soon enough and my registration was removed. So back in the queue. But soon, maybe I can join some D-star work without having to buy a D-star radio. On the antenna front, a kind amateur radio operator nearby knew of another amateur radio operator who helped me out with an antenna. I have the antenna and mast ready to install. Hope to have it up in the coming days. |
|
December 19, 2022 My little ZUMSpot hotspot is working like a charm. I joined two nets tonight. The Huntsville TX net via W5HVL echolink and the Texas Patriots group net via the pi-star YSF hotspot. I was unable to make contact with the local W5HVL repeater using my handheld. Location and time of day certainly affect signals. Hopefully I will have my antenna up and going sometime after Christmas. In the meantime, the ZUMSpot hits the spot. |
|
December 17, 2022 I had a wonderful time connecting with the Walker County Amateur Radio Group in person in Huntsville, TX. Visit their website at https://www.wcarg.org/. I also was able to connect to the Texas Patriots YSF group using my pistar hotspot. Hopefully I can connect to a repeater that is connected to that group next week when I travel a bit further southeast. And this afternoon I was able to hit the W5HVL Repeater 146.86, DCS 631, with my Yaesu FT70D HT while out and about near Dodge, TX. All in all a good day for this new ham. |
|
December 15, 2022 I have set aside my DVMega board to make room for my ZUMRadio Elite 3.5 Hotspot that arrived earlier this week. The postal service kept things exciting by mis-directing the package and delaying delivery by several days. But the hotspot worked as expected right out of the box. It is based on a raspberry pi 4 with 2GB memory. The ZUMRadio website download page hosts the user manual along with firmware images and a troubleshooting guide. So far I have only used YSF on the hotspot, but it seems to be working just fine. Is there a way to add a set of "favorite" groups to the pick list? Nice to have a default group but I would like to have a couple of more handy to switch to rather than having to search each time. Also, I am still learning more about my handheld Yaesu FT70D. One of the annoying features of the FT70D is when I change the frequency (either intentionally or by accident) and then go back to my desired frequency, the radio does not stay on Simplex mode. Guess I should program my hotspot frequency into the memory bank. |
|
December 9, 2022 Received an email response from DVMega yesterday. Currently working with them to check if my settings are correct. Meanwhile, I have started work on my J pole antenna and making my wish list for Santa Claus. |
|
December 6, 2022 DVMEGA on Raspbery Pi 3 I have spent the last few days working on my pistar hotspot project. First I signed up for accounts at radioid.net, brandmeister.com, dstargateway.org, and TGIF.network. Some of these accounts take about 24 hours to become active. Also, for Brandmeister and TGIF, I needed to setup a hotspot password, and I did that. Next I dusted off my raspberry pi: Then I downloaded the latest pistar image from pistar.uk, which was Pi-Star_RPi_V4.1.5_30-Oct-2021. I prepared to flash that image onto a MicroSD card using Balena. My main machine runs Ubuntu 22.04. Well, Balena didn't work out of the box on Ubuntu 22.04. So I chose to create a VM running Ubuntu 20.04. Finally succeeded in flashing the image onto my 32GB MicroSD card. I attached my DVMega Raspberry Pi Dualband Radio HAT to my raspberry pi, plugged in the microSD card with the pistar image and powered it up. And then the fun really began. Bits and pieces of information are peppered across the web. When I search for pistar, I often see videos and other details about how to configure a working set of hardware. And I assumed my hardware was working great. So I churned through the steps for setting up a DMR hotspot first. I even bought a kindle book "Getting Started with the Yaesu FT-70D & MMDVM" by Allan Hall. This proved very helpful because I am still trying to understand what all of the digital radio terminology is about. For example, I knew I needed accounts on radioid.net because another ham told me. But I didn't understand why or what it is used for until I read this book. And yes, there are probably loads of other resources out there. I am just documenting what I did, not what is necessarily the fastest, best route to get where I have arrived. Well, I configured everything on the pistar configuration dashboard like I thought it should be configured, just for DMR. I even drilled into the DMR configuration file through the expert menus and hardcoded the brandmeister gateway ip address and made sure my bransmeister hotspot password was entered correctly. Yet all I kept seeing was the DMR status going from Green to Red on the Admin dashboard. And my DVMega radio board kept flashing a red led. So it was time to look into the log files. There was the issue: Unable to read the firmware version after six attempts. So now what? I didn't get any documentation with the DVMega board. The information online through dvmega.nl is limited to how to flash a firmware version onto the card. In order to flash firmware for this board, you have to solder a jumper wire. I'm not ready to try that (yet). So what have I done to debug this issue? Well, I booted from my regular raspberry pi load and enabled UART and disabled the bluetooth over UART functionality in the /boot/config.txt file. I also removed any tty references in /boot/cmndline.txt. I then snagged a copy of DMMegaVersion from github and gave that a whirl. Added print statements and everything. Learned that the write command is working ok from the raspberry pi but it hangs on the read command. So I installed minicom terminal emulator and shorted the UART rx/tx pins on the raspberry pi using a jumper cable. What do you know, but I can send and receive data across the UART interface, so I think the raspberry pi is ok. Then I ran the DVMegaVersion and the MMDVMHost applications and verified that both of them are transmitting the "get version" command over the UART bus. In the Minicom terminal window I could see the 0xE0, 0x03, 0x00 data being received. So, now what? I sent an email to two DVMega addresses that I found, but I have not yet heard anything. I signed up for the pistar forum and am waiting to be approved. Then I will post a message there. |
|
Nov. 9, 2022 Spending time with my newest radio Yaesu FT-70DR. I've had success transmitting and receiving over a local repeater. Yay! I even upgraded my antenna to a purple Signal Stuff antenna with a glow in the dark tip. I have to admit that it is frustrating tuning the radio with the onboard buttons. Much easier with the RT software. |
|
Oct. 1, 2022 My goal for this website is to document the journey of a new ham operator. I have been interested in amateur radio for many years and finally stepped up and got licensed. I applied for a new radio from the QRZ New Ham Jumpstart Program. The radio and programming software came with free shipping in just a few days after submitting the details and placing the order. Follow this link to find out how you can get a radio. The offer is for newly licensed hams and expires October 31, 2022. |
Old Site meet New Site
- Details
- Written by: ki5yax
- Category: The beginnings
- Hits: 944