RPi V3.4.17 won't boot but 4.1.0 Beta will

[AA2UP]

Hello,

I am a new member of this forum.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3B+. When I try to boot to 3.4.17 the red Pi LED just flashes red for a long time and boot does not happen. If I write an image of the 4.1 beta to the same sd card the Pi boots up immediately.

I have downloaded 3.4.17 three times and flashed the card with newly downloaded images three times to make sure something was not corrupted. But always the same result. I have tried flashing a different sd card and still no difference. I can boot to Raspian just fine with this unit. And, once again, the 4.1 beta boots fine on the same SD card that 3.4 fails on.

Why do I want to use 3.4? I have a Zumspot USB stick and I can't seem to make it into Brandmeister, although Pi-Star shows I am transmitting. But I'm not showing up on the Hose and not hearing anything. Figure there might be a bug in the beta version.

Can someone please help me?

Thanks.

AA2UP

[KE0FHS]

The Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3A+, and 4B+ require Pi-Star 4.1.x. If you want to use 3.4.17, you'll need to get an older Raspberry Pi like the 3B or the Zero W.

[AA2UP]

Toshen,

Sorry, I must have missed that info in all the documentation. Thank you very much!

Judging by your Website, you are an expert at Pi-Star so I hope you don't mind if I ask you another question related to my post.

I am using a Zumspot USB key and I have Pi-Star booted up to 4.1. When I key up my radio the Pi-Star dashboard shows Xmit with no more than .5 BER. However, I am not getting access to the Brandmeister network. I do not appear on the Hose line or in recent activity. I do not hear any receive audio either.

I am signed in to Hotspot Security and have checked my password many times. Using the same password I can access Brandmeister network with BlueDV.

I would be grateful if you could help me on this one.

Thanks. Rich AA2UP

[KE0FHS]

I'm not familiar with the ZUMspot USB, but will ask a few questions:

• Which DMR Master are you using?
• Are you using an ESSID (Extended SSID) with BrandMeister? If yes, have you entered the 2-digit extension in Pi-Star?
• Do you have "ZUMspot - USB stick" selected as your Radio/Modem Type?
• Have you double checked that you have the same frequency entered in Pi-Star and your radio? And is that frequency outside of the satellite range (435.0 - 438.0)?
• When you look at the Pi-Star Dashboard or Admin page, is DMR highlighted green in both the Modes Enabled and Network Status sections?

P.S. I'm an enthusiastic user of Pi-Star, though definitely not an expert.

[AA2UP]

Which DMR Master are you using?
I am using 3101 but have also tried 3102 and 3108--no change.

Are you using an ESSID (Extended SSID) with BrandMeister? If yes, have you entered the 2-digit extension in Pi-Star?
I am not familiar with ESSID at all but I never entered a 2-digit extension in Brandmeister to my knowledge.

Do you have "ZUMspot - USB stick" selected as your Radio/Modem Type?
Yes

Have you double checked that you have the same frequency entered in Pi-Star and your radio? And is that frequency outside of the satellite range (435.0 - 438.0)?
I am using 434.3. Both Pi-Star and radio agree on frequency. When I key up Pi-Star shows TX.

When you look at the Pi-Star Dashboard or Admin page, is DMR highlighted green in both the Modes Enabled and Network Status sections?
Yes.

I started out using BlueDV for Windows and my essential setup is the same on that. I have no problem accessing Brandmeister with BlueDV. But I want to use the Raspberry and Pi-Star if possible.

Here is a screen shot of my config.

Thanks so much, Toshen.

Rich

[

PiStarConfig.PNG (36.38 KiB) Viewed 3478 times

[KE0FHS]

Most of your setup looks okay. Not sure if it makes a difference, but I think the standard entry for Town is the name of your town followed by a comma, a space, and then the QTH Locator grid square. For example, mine is: Lyons, DN70IF
You can use a website like https://aprs.fi to find your grid square.

And you might want to change your URL to Auto so that it points at your QRZ page rather than at Andy's Pi-Star page.

Also, another thing I'm not sure if it makes a difference is your APRS Host. I'm in the U.S. and choose noam.aprs2.net (noam = North America).

Finally, I don't use Talker Alias, so I have my EmbeddedLCOnly and DumpTAData options set opposite to yours (for all my hotspots, but again, I don't have a USB stick). Here are my notes about that:

DMR EmbeddedLCOnly (Embedded Link Control Only) – The default is off. Turning it on disables the Talker Alias data that is sent by MMDVMHost. If you are experiencing audio drop-outs from some stations, you might want to try turning this option on.
Note 1: Apparently, different stations and radios encode and decode Talker Alias data in different ways. One way this variance manifests is that some models of radios can experience audio drop-outs when receiving Talker Alias data from some stations.
Note 2: Link Control data = ID headers, talkgroup, and private calls.

DMR DumpTAData – The default is on. Controls whether Talker Alias data is logged in the /var/log/pi-star/MMDVM-YYYY-MM-DD file. If you're not using Talker Alias, you can turn this option off.

[AA2UP]

Thank you both. I have tried your suggestions and still no joy.

I was using Hot Spot Security in Pi-Star and in Brandmeister but I tried turning them off to see if that was preventing my login. Still no.

Looking at the log, it is clear that I'm not getting logged in to Brandmeister. I have attached a recent snippet. Maybe you guys can see something I'm missing.

Thanks so much.

Rich AA2UP

Capture3.PNG (79.21 KiB) Viewed 3458 times

Capture2.PNG (69.16 KiB) Viewed 3458 times

Capture1.PNG (37.14 KiB) Viewed 3458 times

[AA2UP]

Thanks very much for staying with me on this.

I appreciate and agree with your comments on TAC 310, etc., but I don't think I'm being banned because I've tried to use that TG. I'm not even getting into the BM network so I'm certainly not "parked" there. I just chose TAC because there seems to be a lot of traffic to see if I could receive anything. I have tried Parrot too but, of course, I get nothing back.

For some reason I am not able to log in to Brandmeister with Pi-Star and I am thinking it is some kind of password issue. I have also used this Zumspot USB with BlueDV on Windows and I could not log in to BM with that until I entered my Brandmeister password in the app. This is the password I set up at the outset to be able to use the Brandmeister site.

I have tried that password in HS Security on Pi-Star but it I still can't get in. I am still able to log in on BlueDV and use BM, but I have other issues with BlueDV receive audio breaking up and I don't want to be locked in to using a laptop. I would much prefer to use Pi-Star with my RPi.

Do you know if the Hotspot Security password on Pi-Star needs to be the same as the Website password or does it need to be something different?

Also, I have no idea why I was assigned two DMR IDs--never asked for two. But I have tried them both with no difference with the login problem.

Thank you so much for your help!

Rich

[AA2UP]

Hurray!!! I got it working!

The ESSID was the problem. I was not aware of the importance of setting that up when I first set up my BM connection with Blue DV and the Zumstick; I just used my straight DMR ID with no suffix.

Today I went back in to BlueDV and set up an ESSID of 01 there and then set up 02 on Pi-Star. That did the trick!

That seems so obvious and easy now. But that's the way these things almost always work out.

Thanks so much for all your help! Thanks to both of you for mentioning ESSID, with which I was not familiar being a newbe. This set me on a very slow but correct path.

Rich AA2UP