MMDVM hotspot for YSF-to-DMR (failed) / hotspot YSF2YSF (succeeded) / Mike & Key Hamfest / Unboxing Yaesu FTM-300DR
Contents
Hotspot updated for YSF2DMR work
First problem: no YSF2DMR settings available
Updated again
YSF2DMR not working
YSF2YSF for the win
Mike & Key Hamfest
New-to-me radio: Kenwood TM-281A
Cascadia Radio
Hotspot corrupted from improper shutdown
FTM-300DR unboxing
Thank you’s
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
Rich Casey N5CSU
Miscellaneous notes
Winlink
Time.gov
Pocket
Another hotspot build?
Very interesting antenna discussion on HRW
Make contact
1 — HOTSPOT UPDATED FOR YSF2DMR WORK
I’ve been working on updating my cheap hotspot and it has been a bit of a convoluted journey. Translation: there was no simple, push-button way to get this done.
TL;DR — I did not get YSF2DMR (Yaesu System Fusion to Digital Mobile Radio) to work on my hotspot, but I did succeed with YSF2YSF.
Some friends in Shelton, Washington, are standing up a Yaesu System Fusion repeater. It is bridged to a Brandmeister DMR room and several other services. Since I’m about 135 miles away from my “home” amateur radio club, this new repeater has been a boon for me. I can easily access it from home using my home-built hotspot and my AnyTone DMR handheld radio on DMR. Since my hotspot and HT were already working together, my challenge was to add a channel for the new repeater in the HT’s code plug. Once that was done, it was easy to connect.
I picked up a new Yaesu FTM-300DR mobile radio (unboxing photos at the tail end of this post) for the pickup truck so that I could connect with the Shelton folks while I’m mobile and within RF range. That isn’t working quite the way I envisioned it, so I’m backing up a step and configuring my cheap hotspot to operate in the truck where I’ll use the Yaesu mobile rig to connect to the hotspot operating in YSF2DMR mode.
That’s the plan, but to do that, I have to configure the hotspot. And the spoiler? It didn’t work out quite that way! The other spoiler is — as is the case with most new things — my learning curve has been almost vertical the first few days but is leveling out now as I get more familiar with this particular technology.
First problem: no YSF2DMR settings available
The cheap hotspot was running pi-star release 4.1.7 and when I went to the configuration screen, I didn’t find any place to configure Yaesu System Fusion (YSF) or YSF2DMR. Cue some internet searches and I concluded I needed to update the pi-star software.
I backed up the configuration of the 4.1.7 build and downloaded the 4.1.8 package, burning the image to a new microSD card. When I went to upload the saved configuration, I discovered that Windows had blocked it (message: “insecure download blocked”), thinking it was unsafe. So I pulled out the new card, re-inserted the old card, booted up the hotspot, and saved the configuration one more time…this time telling Windows it was okay to keep.
Once that was done I swapped the cards and rebooted. I restored the configuration and rebooted again, finding the version had advanced to 4.1.8. OK, the upgrade is in so it’s time to look for the YSF settings in the configuration menu. No joy. Again, I did not find any YSF or YSF2DMR settings available.
Back to the internet for more searching where eventually I found information suggesting I needed to update from the command line. Since I had the interface open, I went to the configuration menu, selected expert, and selected SSH access. In the resulting window, I entered sudo pistar-udpate and watched the update process flow smoothly along.
When that was done, I rebooted, and then checked the configuration menu for YSF and YSF2DMR settings…and there they were. After enabling YSF and YSF2DMR, I hit Apply Changes and after those completed, I rebooted again. Now I had green service indicators on the Dashboard, but I was also seeing YSF activity from far flung places showing up in the Dashboard.
Updated again
At that point, I realized I had not updated to the most recent PiStar release which is 4.2.1. It seemed like a good idea to do so and the risk seemed low since I had a working version 4.1.8. I dug up another microSD card (fortunately, I had purchased half-a-dozen SanDisk cards a month ago), downloaded the latest release, unzipped it, and burned the .img file to the card with Raspberry Pi Imager. Before putting the 4.2.1 version into the hotspot, I backed up the configuration of the hotspot and powered it down. Then: swap the cards, power up the hotspot, restore the configuration, and run the update routine just to make sure everything is up to snuff. When all that was done, I went looking for the YSF settings again.
YSF2DMR not working
I spent a couple of hours trying to get YSF2DMR to work, following guides from 0x9900.com and gx4mws.uk. I got close. I got to the point where my hotspot would respond when I keyed up my Yaesu FT-3DR HT, but my received audio was just hash. Off to the side I was running my home-built hotspot and my AnyTone DMR radio to monitor. Let me summarize my two hours of banging my head on the bench and say I set aside trying to get YSF2DMR to work. Instead, I accepted the suggestion of the repeater owner to try YSF to YSF.
That took a bit more Googling, and then I found I had the wrong Digital ID in the radio. I could transmit but couldn’t receive. A couple of hams helped walk me through this part. I had not realized that there was no Dig ID needed to receive. After I configured the digital IDs correctly, I suddenly had crystal clear comms through the repeater, using my HT and the cheap hotspot.
YSF2YSF for the win
So that was a winning experiment. However, I wanted to operate mobile. What I did was configure the wifi on the hotspot to use my phone for internet when it is configured as a cellular hotspot. Then I took the bits and pieces out to the truck, plugged in the hotspot and cell phone, and once everything was booted up, tested again. Success! (But wait, there is more coming!)
I need to learn about WIRES-X next. That should be fun.
2 — MIKE & KEY HAMFEST
The next morning, I left Portland at 6:00 am to attend the Mike & Key hamfest in Puyallup, Washington. (The Mike & Key Amateur Radio Club also publishes a helpful primer for sellers and attendees.) I was monitoring hundreds of repeaters along the way with the Yaesu FTM-300DR and started hearing about a stoppage on my route. Finally, I set the mobile radio to the Mike & Key Club’s repeater frequency and learned that a long-planned bridge construction project had shut down northbound traffic to one lane.
I learned this soon enough that I could detour, traveling along the western side of Joint Base Lewis McChord (JBLM) through Yelm, McKenna, and Roy. I don’t think I saved time but I saved myself a lot of frustration. It was a lovely drive.
All that said and done, it took about 3 1/2 hours to get to the hamfest. I made my way to the ground floor and slowly swam through wall-to-wall hams and tables. For those who have not been to this hamfest, the exhibition hall is the size of a football field. There were a LOT of people and a LOT of tables to cruise!
New-to-me radio: Kenwood TM-281A
Soon, I went upstairs and found my club’s table. It was not as crowded upstairs. After cruising all the tables upstairs, I went downstairs again and this time found a like-new Kenwood TM-281A, complete, for $85. It included a data cable and the RT Systems programming software. It looked brand new.
The TM-281A is a tough radio with Kenwood’s good audio quality. My interest is in using it for packet radio, specifically, APRS and Winlink, with an external TNC. The owner was there so we talked about his use of it (almost none) while I handled the unit. I have been looking for a decent 271 or 281 so this radio quickly had my fingerprints on it.
I’m not a fan of big crowds. Sometimes I’ll follow someone in a powered chair and let them plow the way for me. I got stuck behind a couple of people who were slowly shuffling along, head down, eyes locked to their smartphone screen. With all there was to see and do there, that behavior just made no sense to me at all. I looked for a few other ham friends, said my goodbyes, and escaped with the new-to-me radio under my arm.
Cascadia Radio
Along the way, I also stopped at the Cascadia Radio table. This group has a Discord going that is growing quickly. On the way to the hamfest, one ham was telling others about the Discord group. I shared that ham’s call sign with the Cascadia Radio folks so they could acknowledge him.
Given my experience with annual conferences — both attending them and planning/delivering them — I do wish this hamfest had more social opportunities. I think that would be value added for some folks. But it’s a one-day event and that makes it hard to do a group construction thing or to have some classroom or roundtable opportunities.
Hotspot corrupted from improper shutdown
There’s no way to initiate a clean shutdown of the pi-star hotspot when it’s in the truck. I was using the pi-star hotspot and my cell phone for internet access, and it worked while I drove north from Portland to Puyallup.
But when I shut off the truck, the power to the pi-star hotspot is immediately terminated. That can result in file corruption…and it did. (Well, I suppose I could pull up the pi-star dashboard on the phone screen and go through the menu to shut it down, but I didn’t — I just shut it off.) When I got back to Portland, I ran a couple of updates and rebooted a few times, but it was still missing the selection of the Raspberry Pi hat and the wifi configuration block was also missing…so I did a factory reset, then imported the configuration from the 4.1.8 version (yes, you just figured out that I had not saved a backup of the working 4.2.1 version). Several edits later (from memory), and the hotspot is working again for YSF2YSF. And I saved a backup this time!
I also reconfigured my “good” hotspot (the home-built one) for YSF2YSF and tested it, and that is working fine. I’ll just leave that one running and decide what to do about the aluminum cheap hotspot later. I think the easy answer is to power the hotspot from a USB power bank, and when it’s time to turn it off, carry it in to my computer and proceed to shut it down properly. A shutdown button for these units — one that sends a shutdown signal and then waits 60 seconds — would be a great thing. (Some talk of doing this in code: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=237565.)
3 — FTM-300DR UNBOXING
Here are some photos of the new radio emerging into the light, from the box shipped by Ham Radio Outlet. I bought this to be able to better enjoy the new Yaesu System Fusion repeater going up in Shelton, Washington.
My initial reactions with this mobile rig:
The control head is small. I like that because the head doesn’t take up a lot of real estate in my sightline while driving. The screen is large enough for me to read without reading glasses.
Audio quality is fantastic.
The ability to control scanning and to get weather updates using simple microphone controls is a safety feature. I can concentrate on driving while also using the radio.
By the way, if you have this rig (or another in this family of Yaesu radios), programming via the microSD card is so much simpler than removing the radio from the truck, carrying it in the computer, etc. etc. I use the RTSystems software. This is such a time saver that I wonder why all radios aren’t configured this way.
4 — THANK YOU’S
Steve Stroh N8GNJ
A humble thank you to Steve Stroh N8GNJ, author of the Zero Retries amateur radio newsletter. His weekly newsletter always has interesting content I don’t find anywhere else. I appreciate that. The humble thanks part comes from his very kind note about the Random Wire in Zero Retries 0141, and I quote:
My colleague-in-writing-about-Amateur-Radio, Tom Salzer KJ7T (who writes The Random Wire newsletter) made a compelling case that Amateur Radio Over Internet… is still Amateur Radio. He made the case so well that after reading KJ7T’s article Easy AllStarLink, I felt that my misgivings about Amateur Radio Over Internet was akin to one of those “That’s not real Amateur Radio” elitist snobs that I have no use for. (Thanks KJ7T for curing me of my misgivings about Amateur Radio Over Internet).
If you don’t receive Steve’s newsletter, please consider doing so. You can also find him on Mastodon and on Bluesky.
Rich Casey N5CSU
I appreciated Rich’s comments about the Baefeng UV-3 and about Yaesu System Fusion. Writing a blog is…well…sometimes it’s an exercise in predicting the future and opening yourself to criticism. Whenever I write about AllStarLink, I lose some subscribers. Whenever I write about “real” RF-based radio, I lose some subscribers. I think that’s the very nature of a general radio blog. If I wrote only about, oh, diodes, I’d have a very focused subscriber base. But I like to range widely, experiment, and learn. One supportive comment like Rich’s makes up for tens of unsubscribe notices.
On January 2, 2024, 586 people subscribed. On March 10, I’m a dozen subscribers short of 700. I am humbled, grateful, and amazed. The numbers aren’t important, though — it’s the people and their interest in amateur radio.
5 — MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
Winlink
Have you looked at Winlink lately, in the form of RMS Express? Not to worry: it hasn’t changed. As I went through my weekly ritual of reflection in preparation for writing this edition of the Random Wire, I realized I have been using Winlink for most of my amateur radio life but had never paid to register it. I did the right thing this week by paying the $24 registration fee. That feels right and I’m glad to support this venerable, trusty bit of amateur radio software. In my home club area, the Emergency Management folks use Winlink in exercises and real emergencies. It’s a solid piece of kit for those of us who lean toward ARES-type service.
Time.gov
If you haven’t looked at the time.gov website recently, you should. It’s a beautifully constructed page that removes uncertainty about the time in different U.S. time zones. It even shows UTC time. I confess I popped open the time.gov when I woke up Sunday morning to make sure my clocks had changed. The time.gov site presents a cheery look to just-awakened eyes!
You might wonder about the creative process of writing this blog. One of my most used tools is Pocket. As I go through my week, I peruse hundreds of information sources. When I see something I want to go back to, I save that link to Pocket. For example, here are three from this week that I found worthy of saving to my Pocket:
Pocket is, for me, a very useful way to save links. Better, it allows me to tag the links, so at the end of a week, I can look at what I saved for the Random Wire newsletter!
Another DMR hotspot build?
What was that song lyric? Might as well face it you’re addicted to…radio!
I am contemplating building another DMR hotspot, this time with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W ($25 at Amazon), MMDVM board ($46 at Amazon), and C4Labs case ($20 at Amazon). Add in a microUSB-to-Ethernet adapter ($14 at Amazon) and a solid power supply ($10 at Amazon). Total out-of-pocket for a small, simplex hotspot would be $115, give or take. This is an off-the-cuff thought, meaning I have not researched if those items will actually fit/work together. But…$115 for a small hotspot sounds like a win to me!
Very interesting antenna discussion on Ham Radio Workbench
HRWB 203 – Creative Antenna Projects with Ben Eadie VE6SFX blew my mind. I’ve toyed with using electric fence wire (actually, I have used a de-powered electric fence with an inverted L HF antenna) and electric fencing tape for an antenna, or at least for a ground plane. But Ben’s experimentation with Faraday cloth was like a head slap for me. Like so many HRW podcasts, this one is worth your time. You’ll hear about slot antennas, a Tesseract antenna(!), and using Faraday cloth for portable antenna builds. Great stuff. Many thanks to the entire HRW crew for bringing such great content to us. They are many places and are active on their HRW Discord channel.
6 — MAKE CONTACT
I look forward to hearing from you. In this edition, I am enabling direct messaging through Substack. It’s an experiment!
Also:
Email —> tsalzer@pm.me
Mastodon —> https://mastodon.radio/@kj7t
New: Bluesky —> https://bsky.app/profile/tsalzer.bsky.social
Twitter —> https://twitter.com/KJ7Tom
Random Wire mirror at WordPress —> https://cupofradio.com/
I hope you enjoyed this edition. Please feel free to share this newsletter with your friends. I appreciate you, and I especially like to hear what you found interesting/not interesting!
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