The future of DMR...Where is it heading?

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SOFA_KING

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What is happening to amateur DMR these days? As an early adopter I watched activity increase almost daily on wide-area talkgroups like North America and World Wide, but now there is so much activity that it's becoming hard to get any time on a timeslot! I used to have a nice codeplug with the entire State of Florida that had the basic format everyone used for TS1 and TS2. That worked good for that time period. Checking back now to update my radios and I'm completely shocked! What is going on out there? There are so many new repeaters with so many talkgroups on each time slot that I doubt any effective communication could be accomplished. And everyone is doing their own thing. Some have so many talkgroups jammed in each slot that there is no way to effectively use them all. And with PTT set to so many of these, how does anyone expect to hear a call? Standards seemed to have gone out the window.

Reading into what MARC says about this, the inevitable growth has changed the way these wide area talkgroups are to be used. These are now shaping up to be "calling" talkgroups, and no longer "rag chew" talkgroups. That makes good sense to me, as it's selfish to tie up a world full of repeaters for your own one-on-one QSO (it always was). After establishing contact, move to a working talkgroup like TAC310 or UA113 to further converse. Makes sense to me, but how many of these PTT activated QSO talkgroups are there? Will we need more? And if you put the TAC talkgroups in the same timeslot as calling talkgroups, isn't there going to be inevitable head-butting? There has to be. We need a format standard that will work with minimal clashes. And if people plan to travel with DMR, we need a base standard as a minimum. Programming takes time and you won't be able to stay on top of it the way things are constantly changing.

The efficient way I see to standardize this so effective communication can be accomplished is by placing all wide area "calling" talkgroups on TS1, and then put Local and TAC talkgroups on TS2. All wide area calling talkgroups should be ON full time (otherwise useless), local talkgroups set to ON full time and TAC or QSO talkgroups should be set to the PTT timer. Simply put, TS1 calling talkgroups and TS2 QSO talkgroups.

Thoughts?

Phil
 

MtnBiker2005

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Different DMR TG-Slots lists for each state we can review.


NorCal DMR Talkgroups - Slots
http://norcaldmr.org/Programming Tab/talkgroups/

Papa Sys DMR Talkgroups - Slots
http://papasys.com/dmr/resources/DATA/images/PAPA-TG.jpg

Sierra Nevada DMR Talkgroup - Slots
http://snars.org/dmr/info/

DMR-Utah Talkgroups - Slots
http://www.dmr-utah.net/talkgroups.html

Colorado Rocky Mountain Ham DMR talkgroups - Slots
http://www.rmham.org/wordpress/mototrbo-radio-site-information

AZ Repeaters DMR Talkgroups - Slots
http://www.azrepeaters.net/index.php?n=RepeaterMaps.Mototrbo

DMR-ECS Florida Talkgroups - Slots
http://www.dmr-ecs.org/florida-repeater-talk-groups-.html


http://mountainwestdmr.org
 
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AK9R

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One of the issues I see with DMR locally is that it has become very factionalized. A group of hams who didn't want to be part of the DMR-MARC system bought their own C-bridge and set up their own DMR network. Then another group of hams who didn't want to be part of DMR-MARC and also didn't want to be part of the local, non-MARC system bought their own C-bridge and set up yet another DMR network.

In the end, I think this creates confusion for the user and will limit growth of DMR as a viable amateur radio digital voice mode.
 

N4KVE

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Phil. That's why I spend most of my time on Rick's system. Only 1 TG per time slot, & not connected to D-Marc at all. Listen to NA lately? Everyone has different tx audio levels, & I keep having to adjust my rx volume as each different person speaks. Now there's another guy, Eric who also has 4 repeaters linking Palm Beach with Homestead. Again, 1 TG per time slot. No noise there also. A friend who owns a repeater connected to D-Marc invited me to use his repeater, & while I have only the local, & NA in my radio, NA is not in the scan list. Way too many TG's to cram into 2 time slots. He just had to replace his repeater, & wonders why he should burn out his finals when Jose in LA is talking about what he had for lunch with Bubba in Alabama on NA. What has that got to do with anyone in Florida? He's probably going to make NA PTT. I'm on Rick's system, & it's growing daily as people buy those $125 Tytera junk radios & cause interference. He's now putting up a D-Marc repeater. Don't know why. Hope to talk to you soon.
 

mikewazowski

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It's funny how it only took 2 posts before this thread went totally off the rails.

If you actually read the first post, you would see that SOFA_KING was looking for discussion on how to improve the DMR network.

He was not asking for opinions on other forms of digital communications on the amateur bands.

Sheesh.

Hopefully somebody can spend as much time providing some insight into improving the DMR network as they did formulating their off-topic responses.
 

SOFA_KING

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One of the issues I see with DMR locally is that it has become very factionalized. A group of hams who didn't want to be part of the DMR-MARC system bought their own C-bridge and set up their own DMR network. Then another group of hams who didn't want to be part of DMR-MARC and also didn't want to be part of the local, non-MARC system bought their own C-bridge and set up yet another DMR network.

In the end, I think this creates confusion for the user and will limit growth of DMR as a viable amateur radio digital voice mode.

Exactly! Well put. It's becoming a "too many cooks in the kitchen" to do "whatever chaotic cluster **** thing they can conjure up" type thing anymore. No standards. And Gary, I understand your position, as well. Those systems work very well for this area. But how am I supposed to reach you when you go up to Canada? Even if I make contact with you on NA, where do we move to in order to continue conversing? Assuming TAC310 is not in use, will we be able to use it (if it's even available on the repeaters we are using) if we are getting clobbered by other traffic on the same timeslot? How is that effective? And what about all the repeaters switching NA to PTT only? How would I reach someone if NA is not going to transmit (because it is sleeping)? The things I see most people doing doesn't make any sense.

Experimenting is ok, but effective communication by maintaining some working standards is necessary in my view. Ideally, I would like the basic ability to reach out to a station I want to talk to, even if they're 3000 miles away, and have an uninterrupted conversation. And I would like the option to silently standby (no noise out the radio speaker...at times) and receive a call from someone trying to reach me. Would Text Messaging work for this outside the local area network? I haven't been able to get that to work across the nation. But you still need a clear timeslot to have a conversation, and that is falling by the wayside with what I see being jammed into these repeaters. The whole "just another reflector" or "big noisy partyline" thing is just not a good way to get a hold of someone if all you can do is listen all day to noise about someone's new toy radio or "dongle" widget. It gets fatiguing and old...fast...at least to me. There may be times you want that, but what about just communicating with someone without all the interruptions?

I know there are differing points of view on "ham radio" today. Maybe I see communicating as more than just a quick contact or big worldwide party line type of thing. I'm trying to find something that works...other then a commercial cellphone. Some way in amateur radio to reach specific stations from, and to, anywhere without listening to noise all day (and night). Something universal. D-STAR used to work great for this with CALLSIGN ROUTING before all these repeaters got tied up with these noisy reflectors. You could even silance your radio with the callsign squelch function when you wanted quiet, and that worked with the callsign routing. The system knew where to route the call automatically. Brilliant! But now you can't get through with all this reflector noise. That feature is defeated by all the noise. The MARC Network was my hope for getting that ability back, but it's going to the dogs now. Same thing...another free-for-all noisefest. Can't there be one ham radio mode and network method that would allow reliably reaching someone you want to reach...and have a conversation with? One with the advantages of what digital technologies offer???

I'm going to look at Fusion now and what it has to offer. Maybe the system has some method that will accomplish this basic function (I hope). Wires-X is starting to look interesting. We will see what it can do.

Phil
 
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SOFA_KING

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It's funny how it only took 2 posts before this thread went totally off the rails.

If you actually read the first post, you would see that SOFA_KING was looking for discussion on how to improve the DMR network.

He was not asking for opinions on other forms of digital communications on the amateur bands.

Sheesh.

Hopefully somebody can spend as much time providing some insight into improving the DMR network as they did formulating their off-topic responses.

Sorry, Mike. I was typing while you did editing. Thank you for cleaning it up. I hope my response didn't also derail things. I was responding to what was posted before the edit.

Phil
 

N4KVE

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If you want my opinion on how to improve DMR, my reply would be to cut way back on the number of TG's. 12+ TG's just can not fit into 2 time slots at the same time. All you need is 2 TG's fighting for the same time slot & someone will get a "system busy" bonk. While we have a few D-Marc repeaters here locally, many in the 2-way business who are hams have stepped up & have systems set up linking a good part of Florida. The GREAT thing is, 1 TG per time slot. No busy bonks. However, the owner must know you to get access to their machines.
 

SOFA_KING

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Good points. And much faster talking to you on the FL NET system about this. I need to donate more to Rick and John. My "dues" are way past due.

P
 

N8OHU

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If you want my opinion on how to improve DMR, my reply would be to cut way back on the number of TG's. 12+ TG's just can not fit into 2 time slots at the same time. All you need is 2 TG's fighting for the same time slot & someone will get a "system busy" bonk. While we have a few D-Marc repeaters here locally, many in the 2-way business who are hams have stepped up & have systems set up linking a good part of Florida. The GREAT thing is, 1 TG per time slot. No busy bonks. However, the owner must know you to get access to their machines.

This works fine for small groups, and is essentially the way DMR-MARC was in the early days, as I understand it. It was the growth of DMR across the US and around the world that lead to the issues that exist where hams are using the World Wide or North America talk groups as if it was still the early days, instead of using those groups to find users to talk to and then moving to a PTT group. Of course, there are also those that decry the effort to move to a more efficient system as taking away their enjoyment of just listening to the traffic or something else.
 

AK9R

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It was the growth of DMR across the US and around the world that lead to the issues that exist where hams are using the World Wide or North America talk groups as if it was still the early days, instead of using those groups to find users to talk to and then moving to a PTT group.
Help my understanding. Let's say you and I run into each other on North America (a DMR-MARC talkgroup, correct?). I'm near Indianapolis, you are in far northeastern Ohio, so we, obviously, are talking through different repeaters. Is there a talkgroup that we could move our conversation to rather than tie up North America?
 

mikewazowski

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Sorry, Mike. I was typing while you did editing. Thank you for cleaning it up. I hope my response didn't also derail things. I was responding to what was posted before the edit.

Phil

No problem at all.

It was your thread and if you wish to take it into another direction that's up to you. When other people take it in a different direction, that's rude.

As a former DMARC user, I was curious to see what ideas people had about improving the network. The debate over the various digital modes has been done before and there was no need to revive it in this thread.
 

mikewazowski

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Help my understanding. Let's say you and I run into each other on North America (a DMR-MARC talkgroup, correct?). I'm near Indianapolis, you are in far northeastern Ohio, so we, obviously, are talking through different repeaters. Is there a talkgroup that we could move our conversation to rather than tie up North America?

From the DMARC map http://www.dmr-marc.net/images/talkgroups-regional2.png, it appears you could use the Midwest group on 3169 which looks like you would tie up repeaters in 11 states.

You would also have available some of the on-demand talkgroups such as TAC310 which would only tie up only the machines you were using.
 

N4KVE

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Yes, Tac 310. But if people were still using NA, TS1 would still be busy, & you would not be able to access Tac 310, since NA, & Tac 310 both use TS1. That doesn't make sense to me.
 

mikewazowski

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Then use the Midwest group on timeslot 2 if you need immediate communications.

Our area repeaters have North America set as an on-demand group with a 15 minute inactivity timer. I'm not sure if this means 15 minutes of local inactivity or 15 minutes of network inactivity. Local would be the best as the repeater would be freed up for other conversations.
 
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N4KVE

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So let me rephrase this. 2 guys hook up on NA. One's in NYC, & the other in LA. They don't want to hog NA, so they decide to go to Tac 310. There is no statewide TG they can go to on TS2, so Tac 310 is the only other choice, but since TS1 is very busy because of traffic on NA, how how does the conversation continue on Tac 310, because TS1 is busy with NA? That's the weakness of having all these TG's on 2 time slots.
 

mikewazowski

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As I said in my last post, if NA is an on-demand talkgroup that times out after x minutes of local inactivity, you wait for the timer to expire and then make your call on TAC310.

And yes, everybody realizes that having all these talkgroups on 2 timeslots is a weakness. That's why the OP started this thread.
 

mikewazowski

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Not on our repeaters:

Talkgroups

Perhaps making more groups on-demand would help.

Have a calling group which is permanent across all repeaters and meant only for making the initial contact. After that, you move to an on-demand group.
 
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