Timeslot confusion

Help with DMR issues
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G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Timeslot confusion

Post by G6JEF »

Hi all.
Can anyone advise me if I have something adrift with my pistar setup ?
I'll say at this point that my Zum Spot appears to be working ok but it's what I see on my dashboard compared to what I have setup in my codeplug that is confusing me and I need to know if I need to correct anything.
In my radio codeplug I have a couple of dozen talkgroups programmed in on DMR with the colour codes and timeslots set to 1 on both but I see on my pistar dash in the bottom left corner that my timeslot 2 is enabled and green but timeslot 1 is not and grey'd out.
Have I anything set wrong here as I have seen a couple of peoples dashboards and some have just TS2 enabled and some both.
Thanks if anyone enlighten me.
NQ4T
Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:48 pm

Re: Timeslot confusion

Post by NQ4T »

Simplex hotspots don't support timeslots, so everything shows up as TS2. According to a post in this thread, in this case it doesn't matter what timeslot is being used on the radio, the hotspot and radio will pick each other up. Or should. It's been a while since I ran simplex on DMR. I seem to recall the radio just duplicates things for both timeslots.

Now if you have a fancy full-duplex hotspot; then you can activate and use both timeslots.

If things don't work on the radio with TS1, then modify the codeplug for TS2.
G6JEF
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 16, 2020 5:13 pm
Location: Bridlington

Re: Timeslot confusion

Post by G6JEF »

Ah right....

Thanks for that, it's things like this you don't seem to be able to find out unless you start bothering folk on forums. I did a search but couldn't pin it down, will have a look at your link.
AF6VN
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:15 am

Re: Timeslot confusion

Post by AF6VN »

Simplest is just to set those channels in the radio to TS-2.

I'd be a bit concerned if the radio was sending the same traffic on both time slots -- as that could imply interference with valid users of the other time slot. A proper repeater would be sending separate streams, one per time slot, meaning two groups of listeners can hear their traffic. Replying may go to the strongest signal (I haven't studied enough to tell if the radios are actually supposed to cycle the output amp by timeslot (since it is called Time-Division Multiplex, it is implied that transmitters cycle to share the alternate time slots).

The hotspot, OTOH, being so low powered might do so (duplicate streams), but if it doesn't, it means your radio is listening on an empty time slot.

--
AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
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