Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

General support for the Pi-Star System
Post Reply
G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by G6JEF »

Hi all....
Some months ago I purchased a ZumSpot from Martin Lynch and for work related and personal reasons I've not hade the time to get my head around setting it up until now.
The device came pre-built with the memory card pre-installed with the Pi Star software.
What's concerning me now is the fact that Brandmeister has recently had to change it's IP address as I'm sure most of you will know and I see on their site that it asks you to update your "Masters List".
Before I go diving in could someone advise me what and where the Masters list is, is it in the Pi Star software on the Micro SD or on the Brandmeister dashboard ?
If on the SD card does this mean re-flashing the card with the latest image as it were or can I just go ahead and power up the Zum, connect to my WiFi and proceed as I would have done months ago ?
I hope that makes sense and thanks if you can help, still new to DMR despite having a rig and HS for months.
Regards, Steve G6JEF.
User avatar
G8SEZ
Posts: 553
Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:26 pm

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by G8SEZ »

This should be handled by the daily updates that occur during the night hours, all of the host files are updated from the Pi-Star servers. The same is true for Pi-Star updates but not for upgrades (where the Pi-Star version changes, i.e. 4.1.3 -> 4.1.4 being the last such event).

Underlying OS changes are also handled but require a manual login via ssh using the Configuration->Expert page, then run

sudo pistar-update

followed by

sudo pistar-upgrade

At this point a reboot is almost certainly needed.

HTH, please feel free to ask for additional help if you need it.
--

Brian G8SEZ
G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by G6JEF »

Thanks Brian, I appreciate your help, especially your final comment.
I think what I'll do is get my codeplug sorted out, fire up the ZumSpot and leave it on for a few days and see what happens.
I've since found out a tiny bit more on the Brandmeister website but as usual they assume you know what you are doing.
DMR is certainly a journey but I'm making progress.
G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by G6JEF »

Thanks for that, my zum display doesn't come up with any versions it just scrolls the words MMDVM so I might flash an empty card and slot it in, keeping the old card until I know everything is working.
Problem I have now is no matter how I try I can't get onto the Pi Star dashboard, non of the links will work.
G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by G6JEF »

OK, an update......
Have managed to get into the config page on the hotspot, the problem was that I was expecting the Auto AP to come up with the goods and it did seem to find my modem and I was able to connect to it through my WiFi settings, however despite that, it still needed for me to go through the WiFi builder procedure to enter my SSID and modem password.
I have made an initial configuration on the dashboard but I need to update the Pi-Star image to the latest version and here lies another obstacle. I have purchased a new, genuine SanDisc 16 Gb card, I have full formatted it with SanDisc formatter and using Win32 Disc Imager attempted to put the latest image file on the card but no matter what I do the image doesn't transfer even though it says the transfer was successful, so yet another stalling of procedures.
AF6VN
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:15 am

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by AF6VN »

G6JEF wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 2:23 pm OK, an update......
Have managed to get into the config page on the hotspot, the problem was that I was expecting the Auto AP to come up with the goods and it did seem to find my modem and I was able to connect to it through my WiFi settings, however despite that, it still needed for me to go through the WiFi builder procedure to enter my SSID and modem password.
I have made an initial configuration on the dashboard but I need to update the Pi-Star image to the latest version and here lies another obstacle. I have purchased a new, genuine SanDisc 16 Gb card, I have full formatted it with SanDisc formatter and using Win32 Disc Imager attempted to put the latest image file on the card but no matter what I do the image doesn't transfer even though it says the transfer was successful, so yet another stalling of procedures.
On the Beaglebone forums, Win32 Disk Imager has been deprecated. The recommendation is to use Balena Etcher (which is smart enough to not require one unpack ZIP files to get to the image file).

Win32 Disk Imager may still be useful if making a /copy/ of the SD card onto the computer.

--
AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by G6JEF »

AF6VN wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:28 pm
G6JEF wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 2:23 pm
On the Beaglebone forums, Win32 Disk Imager has been deprecated. The recommendation is to use Balena Etcher (which is smart enough to not require one unpack ZIP files to get to the image file).

Win32 Disk Imager may still be useful if making a /copy/ of the SD card onto the computer.
Yeah, I dare say that opinions abound about various applications, I got there in the end and Win 32 worked fine on this occasion, the problem was the fact that the image hadn't unpacked by the look of it despite it going into a different folder so it was trying to put the zipped up file onto the card and it was that that was making it fail, I interrogated the card and each time it was empty. I started again and unzipped it to a totally empty folder and the image transferred fine, I've since updated and upgraded with no problem so all hunky dory at the moment.
AF6VN
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:15 am

Re: Newbie About To Take The Plunge.

Post by AF6VN »

G6JEF wrote: Sun Apr 18, 2021 1:48 pm
AF6VN wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 6:28 pm
G6JEF wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 2:23 pm
On the Beaglebone forums, Win32 Disk Imager has been deprecated. The recommendation is to use Balena Etcher (which is smart enough to not require one unpack ZIP files to get to the image file).

Win32 Disk Imager may still be useful if making a /copy/ of the SD card onto the computer.
Yeah, I dare say that opinions abound about various applications, I got there in the end and Win 32 worked fine on this occasion, the problem was the fact that the image hadn't unpacked by the look of it despite it going into a different folder so it was trying to put the zipped up file onto the card and it was that that was making it fail, I interrogated the card and each time it was empty. I started again and unzipped it to a totally empty folder and the image transferred fine, I've since updated and upgraded with no problem so all hunky dory at the moment.
That is one reason Balena Etcher has been recommended. Where Win32 Disk Imager just dumps the contents of a file directly onto an SD card, regardless of what the file contains (ZIP compression, etc.), Etcher is smart enough to decompress ZIP files looking for an image file within the archive.

--
AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
Post Reply