DMR Repeater has Intermittent Dropouts

Help with DMR issues
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WM4B
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Joined: Mon May 06, 2019 1:02 am

DMR Repeater has Intermittent Dropouts

Post by WM4B »

I have a new DMR repeater at a local site and am experiencing intermittent dropouts on the RF side. The repeater is currently a pair of Motorola Radius, but the issue is identical when the MMDVM/rPi is connected to a MICOR Mobile. The issue also occurs on a dummy load (with or without the duplexer installed.)

The issue occurs when a user is on RF and is having an ongoing conversation. Within 10 minutes or so, the repeater will stop responding to the user on RF, but any network traffic continues to be heard. Switching TGs or TS has no effect, but the repeater starts to operate normally within a minute or so. This also happens when users are on Local 9.

Hardware is a Repeater-Builder MMDVM board with a rPi 3B+ and/or a rPi 4 (depending on which repeater I'm working on at the time). SD card has been reflashed multiple times. Internet is cellular with what appears to be a very good signal.

Today, the repeater was running multimode (DMR/DSTAR/FM) but don't think it matters if it is stand-alone DMR or multimode... but I turned off the other modes anyway.

A portion of the MMDVM.Log file is uploaded to http://wm4b.wikidot.com/local--files/files/mmdvm.txt. AE4XO was coming in on the network and KE4LRS was on RF. Eventually, KE4LRS was unable to get in on RF and switched to another repeater. You can see where this happens.

It looks to me like bad things are happening in that log file, but I don't really know what I'm looking at; I'm a hardware guy - not a programmer. I'd really like to get this working and so far hacking around has been fruitless; I really need someone who knows what they're looking at to guide me.

Mike
WM4B
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Re: DMR Repeater has Intermittent Dropouts

Post by M1DNS »

To save us (me) endlessly scrolling through...
At what time stamp in the log do you believe this to occur as I see no errors indicated in the log.
it shows ke4lrs mostly entering via the network. When it does report him via rf it shows him with high packet loss. You can see on a few attempts the log reports him as indicating it receiving only 3 of the 12packets sent on his initial keyup, then he drops out.
Is the issue seen with only this one callsign or does it happen via many users? If its just the one id say he needs improve his setup to better hit the rptr. If its miltiple users try fine tuning the rptr settings for lowest BER indicated across your userbase.

Also do you really mean 10mins of Tx time.
Networks are mostly designed to drop (TOT) after 3-5mins. Check your rf TOT settings in mmdvmhost via the dashboards expert pages.

You could also try disabling talkeralias for a while, see how that works for you.



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Andrew M1DNS.
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WM4B
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Re: DMR Repeater has Intermittent Dropouts

Post by WM4B »

Yeah... KE4LRS was a bad example because he's on an HT, but he was the one who contacted me. It's NOT just him... it's a variety of users.

And no, I'm not talking about ToT... I'm talking about being 10 minutes (or so) into a QSO.

BER has been tweaked within an inch of its life and typically is at 0.0 and rarely exceeds 0.2 (KE4LRS being the exception).

I did disable talkeralias last night... we'll see if that helps.

Mike
WM4B
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