Hotspots for use in EMO and radio coms for other events.

Help with DMR issues
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VE9SY
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2018 12:46 am

Hotspots for use in EMO and radio coms for other events.

Post by VE9SY »

OK as most posts start out, I'm new to DMR. I bought my Zumspot a little over a year ago, and ordered a cheap DMR radio right away. So I got the Zumspot set up, and once I got the radio, I started to play with it. I then hear that this Baofeng (ya I know) was blocked on repeaters. My understanding is it can be used on a hot spot because the hot spot only uses TS2 so no issues. Is this correct??

Then I bought the all new one that was guaranteed to work on the repeaters. It worked for some, but not others. Having said that, I finally said the heck with it and got a Retevis. I watched a great video on programing it, and just followed along changing what needed to be changed for our local repeater. Wow it worked. SO I make a few channels is a second zone for my hot spot and yea it works!!!!! After a whole year I say my Zumspot come to life!!!!

Now After reading a few posts here, I understand that programing is basically pointing everything to TS2 then the code to connect to who you want to connect to.

Now for the fun one! OK a couple of times a year we are involved with the MS society for a walk and a 2 day bike tour. Plus we do EMO. EMO isn't to big of a deal, as we have multiple systems connecting most of the province but there is still some gaps. For the Bike tour we due, we are finding every year that out coverage on 2 meters is getting worse with poor coverage. Is there a way that we can set up our hotspots to allow all 6 to 12 of us can be connected to each other through the hotspots without tying up a reflector or talk group? this is the big $64,000 question. WE don't want to tie anything up if we can help it. Can WE have a private talk group some how? I hope I haven't made this confusing. I'm a little confused right now trying to figure this out..
VE1AIC
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2018 1:55 pm

Re: Hotspots for use in EMO and radio coms for other events.

Post by VE1AIC »

While this Forum is for Pi-Star issues, I would suggest you post your local DMR operational questions on the NB-DMR FB group.

https://www.facebook.com/DMRNB/

or via its web page:

http://nbdmr.net/nbdmr2/


A short answer to your question though. For BM-Canada network you can apply for a published talkgroup or just start using one that fits in your area's numerical assignment. The NB provincial TG is 3029, so a suggested local/regional TG might be 302910 or similar number of the 3029xxx format.

You will find some TG's are published but many are not and change regularly.

https://wiki.brandmeister.network/index.php/Canada

73, Ron
VE1AIC
M1DNS
Pi-Star Team
Posts: 1388
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:30 am

Re: Hotspots for use in EMO and radio coms for other events.

Post by M1DNS »

If you have a registered repeater call available, you can use its DMR id as a talkgroup. It's a workaround many are now using as TG's for specific use cases become more scarce.

Alternatively look at running something like HB Link or XLX reflector locally. If you can establish a private IP network between each asset you can create a TG thats totally independent and doesn't tie up or rely on any other service.

Andrew M1DNS, (Mod)




Andrew M1DNS.
Pi-star Admin Team.
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kd2lh
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Aug 22, 2019 3:26 pm

Re: Hotspots for use in EMO and radio coms for other events.

Post by kd2lh »

You certainly could establish a network of low power duplex hotspots, but a better approach would be to use a few higher power repeaters.

In any case, you would not want to use simplex hotspots because they will compete with each other if they can hear each other on the single frequency they operate on. Alternatively, you could put them on different frequencies, or use different color codes, but your users would need to know where to switch radio channels.

Your hotspot / repeater infrastructure would need a TCPIP network backbone to connect through to reach Brandmeister. They could be a RF or wired backhaul but have to be available at each hotspot / repeater site.

You could use talkgroups to sort out different associated groups of users, but they will all compete for the same channel unless you use duplex hotspots or repeaters, which would offer two concurrent communication paths on the channel through the two available timeslots.
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