Radio can't "talk" to the hot spot.

[sterryo1]

I apologize up front if this question/discussion has already been covered, just point me in the right direction and I'll go there.

That said, let's start with the equipment:
Radio: BTECH DMR-6X2 hand held (latest firmware is installed).
Hot spot (or hat as I have read) is a simplex MMDVM Pi-Star Raspberry Pi Zero 2 Rev 1.0.

I am at a complete loss, I have searched for at least a week trying to find the answer to my issue, but no luck so far. I am an IT professional, so technology is not new or foreign to me, but maybe I am just that dumb.

Code plug "appears" to work and be OK. I have about 26 channels programed and so far have been able to listen to TG 91 World Wide and TG 93 North America. Simply because they are the most active of the TG's I have in my code plug.

The Pi-Star is configured to use DMR with the Brandmeister network. I see the contacts coming through on the dashboard and through the radio. The MMDVM is setup/configured as per the mfgr instructions and some youtube videos. I have tested the BTECH radio using an analog simplex frequency and it TX & RX just fine.

Now for the problem: I have configured a couple of channels to use the Parrot TG, Brandmeister claims to use 310997 for the TG number, others say to use 9990. Either way, it is not working, I do not get anything back, just silence. I have checked, double checked and triple checked everything else on the web to be sure it is configured correctly. I.E. yes it is set to Private Call. Nothing appears in the dashboard to indicate the hot spot has received the signal from the radio. I am less that three feet away from the hot spot and the radio, so it's not a distance issue. The power output is set to low.

I have a second hot spot that will be used in a different location (over one thousand miles away) but as a test, I set that one up at my current location and I get the exact same result. I think that eliminates the hot spot as the problem, which means there is a setting on the radio I cannot find or my CP is NG. I also downloaded another CP from the Miklor support site (DMR Sample Code Plugs - Miklor) and same thing is happening. I try the Parrot TG and hear nothing back.

What am I missing or what did I screw up?

 

[n9pna]

If you have a screen shot of one of your channels that you have programmed and your DMR ID, that would help. Also, do you have the frequency offset configured on your hotspot? Do you have a Brandmeister hotspot password set up in selfcare and on your hotspot? Does your hotspot appear on your Brandmeister dashboard?

 

[jazzboypro]

I think that even without a BM password he should see is call sign on the hotspot dashboard when TX. I am not familiar with this particular hotspot but is it VHF, UHF or both ? Make the radio and hotspot are communicating on the right band. I use an openspot and it’s UHF only and no offset is required.
’

 

[hill]

I only use DMR repeaters, but the Parrot talkgroup is 9998 and is a group call.

It should repeat back what you transmitted to see how you sound.

 

[sterryo1]

Thank you all for your responses. Here are the answers to your questions... I hope.

N9PNA:

• If you have a screen shot of one of your channels that you have programmed and your DMR ID, that would help.
• Also, do you have the frequency offset configured on your hotspot?
  • I am guessing you are referring to the TX & RX offsets on the hotspot. If yes, I have them set at zero right now, but have also tried -475. Same results when changing them.

• Do you have a Brandmeister hotspot password set up in selfcare and on your hotspot?
  • Yes. It is highly recommended by Brandmeister and many other posts on the web.
• Does your hotspot appear on your Brandmeister dashboard?
  • Yes. The second one in the list is the one I tested with and as you can see it's offline.

Jazzboypro:

• The hot spot is a +/- $100 hotspot from Amazon (China). I didn't want to invest too much $$$ until I knew I could get it set up and how much I would use it. If you go to Amazon and just search for MMDVM Hotspot you will find various versions of them.

Hill:

• DMR repeaters are a whole other animal I have yet to figure out. But unfortunately, I am not close enough to hit one, so it is a hot spot for me. Don't get me wrong, I "understand" how repeaters work and have plenty set up on my other analog radios. DMR repeaters, finding them and determining an actual repeater versus someone's simplex or duplex hot spot is where I have confusion. The Brandmeister repeater map shows repeaters, but so far they are set to private call so I am not able to access them yet. If I recall, sometimes you need to request access on DMR repeaters.
• As for the Parrot TG, I understand that it's supposed to repeat back what you say, but there appears to be many different TG numbers for Parrot. Some say 9990, BM says theirs is 310997, you are suggesting 9998. I haven't tried 9998 but so far I have not been able to get to a parrot TG with the other two.

 

[jazzboypro]

On the first picture you seem to be using encryption ? can you try turning it off ? i checked my radio and i don't use encryption. Also for TG91 I use colors code 1 and slot 1 (it probably vary depending on location)

 

[sterryo1]

Unless I am missing it, it looks like encryption is off. The encryption type only offers me two options and neither one is an off feature.



Regarding the color code and time slot 3 and 2 respectively are what my hot spot is set to. Forgive me if this a dumb question, but don't the channel setting and hot spot CC & TS have to match?

 

[jazzboypro]

Yes the CC have to match but i think the TS between your radio and hotspot is not important. I asked for the encryption because the settings are a bit different than mine. Here is my setup for TG91



This is the DMR setup on my openspot

 

[n9pna]

Configs look good. I see your hotspot on the BM page. You may want to drop all of those talk groups. With 91 and 93 on there, your hotspot could be in near constant transmit. The other thing is that if your radio can receive your hotspot, but not transmit to it, your hotspot may be too far off frequency. You will need to determine the correct offset if it is not on a sticker on your hotspot or mmdvm board. You can get this by running "sudo pistar-mmdvmcal" on your hotspot while your radio transmits (google for instructions).

 

[hill]

different TG numbers for Parrot. Some say 9990, BM says theirs is 310997, you are suggesting 9998.

You need to try tg 9998 as group call and report back, since this talkgroup is used for parrot.

Also don't have this this radio, but some radios require a receive group to be able to pass audio. You can enter a receive group with just talkgroup 9998 and see if this works.

 

[dickie757]

I just went through this setting up a stm32-dvm. My levels were off, so i found the parrot for BM is 310997 private call. 310 is the master for USA, minus the server number, and 997 for parrot. If you are on a different master, change accordingly.

Can you configure a VFO digi channel on the fly? That should take the CP out of the equation, and let you see every setting without too much trouble

 

[sterryo1]

I had high hopes, but still no success.

I researched and ran the sudo command mentioned. After some trial and error and repeating the tests over and over, I think I was successful in finding the offsets for the hot spot. I opened up the hot spot and dismantled it to try and find this sticker so many have mentioned, but there is no sticker to be found.


The DMR is set correctly for Brandmeister, this was one of those settings that was set up initially from the start.


I also tried the Parrot TG using 9998, nothing. Oddly enough, there is no option to add the parrot TG's to the Receive Group so that is off the table.

The only thing I haven't tried is configuring a digital channel on the fly. I'm pretty sure the radio is capable, as for me is a different story. I'll need to research it a little bit to understand and set it up correctly. I'm sure it's not difficult, I just want to make sure I do it right.

Thank you all again for your responses and hopefully patience.

 

[dickie757]

Hopefully some one with a Btech 6x2 can chime in to help. I have a 878, but dont know how similar they aren't

 

[sterryo1]

I think, there for I .... never mind. I have been playing around some more this evening and I actually got the radio to talk to the hotspot and Parrot to talk back to me. What I don't know is which of two things I changed that worked.

1. I found several articles that talk about using SSH to access the calibration tool built in to the Pi-Star software.
2. The problem I found was that no two articles are the same. Each one is similar, but seem to be missing a piece here or a piece there.
3. This article is last one I used to determine my offsets: Getting the best bit error rate (BER) from your Pi-star MMDVM | George Smart – M1GEO. It got me working but my BER is still way higher than it should be. first key up was 13+%. The Parrot test was a 5.7% BER, a little more reasonable, but still bad.
4. The other thing I changed was the frequency of the hotspot & my HT. I was using 446.075000, the article writer had his radio set to 434.25000, so I did the same.
5. Following the steps, minus the D-Star info, I got an offset -848.

Thank you all again for you support and responses.

I am open to suggestions as to how I should fine tune my offsets. Keep trying the various ways on the web or do I painstakingly adjust my offsets manually +/- 001 steps at a time? 005, 010 etc., anyone have thoughts?

 

[dwh367]

On Brandmeister the parrots (310997 and 9990) need to be sent as a private call. I see a couple of potential issues. Unless you manually changed the settings in your hotspot you should be using CC1 rather than CC3.

You need to try tg 9998 as group call and report back, since this talkgroup is used for parrot.

On Brandmeister the parrot is a private call to 9990 or 310997. On TGIF it can be either a private or group call to 9990.

 

[dwh367]

I am open to suggestions as to how I should fine tune my offsets. Keep trying the various ways on the web or do I painstakingly adjust my offsets manually +/- 001 steps at a time? 005, 010 etc., anyone have thoughts?

I used 25Hz increments and a pen and paper. I used the 5 second test setting and wrote down my BER for each step. I started by stepping up until my BER kept increasing. I then reset it and stepped down until my BER kept increasing. Using my notes I found the ranges where its sweet spot seemed to be. I then used the 30 second test, in those ranges, to help fine tune it. It can vary greatly from hotspot to hotspot but mine worked best at +25Hz. I'm averaging a .02 BER with is considered excellent. Anything below 2% is acceptable (in the green). I tested using DMR as that's the mode I use.

 

[sterryo1]

Thank you dwh367 for the feedback. I was playing around with it yesterday manually adjusting the offsets 1 Hz at a time and the best I could get was a BER of 4.8%. Way ahead of you on the pen and paper thing too. I'm going to try to recalibrate and determine the offsets, it's either going to the same, close or way off.
I'll report back once I complete the next round.

 

[sterryo1]

Hello all, sorry for the late reply. I'll get right to it.
1. Somewhere along this journey I came across an article that talked about upgrading/updating the Pi-Star software that the hot spot runs on. It's called The WPSD Project (W0CHP.radio). I was playing around with that for a bit, but managed to get everything configured to match the original Pi-Star software.
2. I had used a couple different methods to determine the offset for the hot spot and, well, I posted my results a little further up the page. The new software has a similar way to the Pi-Star software to test and determine the offset in the dashboard. I played around with the settings for some time and finally got my BER down to a respectable 0.14% at a whopping -1350. I haven't gone in both directions increasing and decreasing to find the mean frequency yet and I was just so happy to get the 0.14%, I have been enjoying my small victory.

I did test the Parrot TG, I got the message back from Parrot and got a 0% BER in the Dashboard as a result. Maybe it's good, maybe I need to still do some fine tuning, but as of now I just need to find the time and courage to reach out on one of the talk groups and make some contacts and see how we sound.

 

[dickie757]

99% of my radio hobby has been listening. When the times comes to PTT, you'll know it. Try 31411, Central Oregon, esp Tuesday evenings around 630pm Pacific time. They still run a net that I started a while back. I always called it a fun place to mess up. Absolutely no judgement, just helping hands. Makes for a nice evening of chit-chat.

 

[KD8DVR]

The latest version of Pi-star has a calibration tool on the expert page. Much easier than the old way.