Colorado DigitalAfter a long-ish hiatus from activity, we have been making a lot of changes to the Colorado Digital system and specifically, to XLX303. We have consolidated some systems, removed some older reflectors and bridges, and centered everything around XLX303. The big change comes from upgrading the XLX reflector to v2.5.2. This allows for YSF linking […]
The BrandMeister Worldwide network is used by a lot of hams worldwide. With 45 Master Servers around the world, over 4,000 repeaters, and 13,000 hotspots connected at any one time, it is by any definition a large network. As the network continues to grow in size and use, it is important to know where to […]
Amateur radio operators are notoriously thrifty. We will wait to purchase something until we get a 5% coupon, or haggle over shipping. It seems to be a characteristic common to most hams. But we are also generous. The same ham that haggled over $1 at the swap meet might also give you the shirt off […]
Recently on our Colorado Digital Telegram group, we were discussing the APRS reception capabilities of the Yaesu FT-2 and FT-3 HT’s. I decided to do a quick experiment comparing the APRS reception/decoding of my FT-2DR vs my Kenwood TH-D74a. Here is the video (TL;DR- the Kenwood is much better)
One very cool but often underutilized feature of DMR is the ability to send and receive SMS messages.The BrandMeister network has a few different SMS service numbers and functions available. The details on this service can be found on this page in the BrandMeister wiki (which you will have to translate from German). In this […]
OpenGD77 is a very exciting and active DMR radio project. This project involves hacking the inexpensive Radioddity GD77 dual band DMR handheld and its associated customer programming software (CPS). The core group of developers who are working on OpenGD77 are Roger VK3KYY, Kai DG4KLU, Jason VK7ZJA, Alex DL4LEX, Daniel F1RMB, and Colin G4EML. Apparently the […]
One of the great things about using hotspots for digital radio is the potential for portability. Hotspots can be small and they use relatively little power and data. In this post, I’ll discuss size, power use, and wifi access, and provide some use cases from my own experiences with portable hotspot operations. Hotspot Size Limiting […]
An important question to consider when building a pi-star based hotspot is what version of Raspberry Pi to use. You have three basic form factors to choose from: the zero, A+, and B+. The Pi-zero is the smallest of these three, followed by the A+, and then the B+. The latest versions are the Pi-zero […]