Neo-Pi & Orange Pi - Updating causes MMDVMHost to stop cummunicating with MODEM

[K1IMD]

I have several mmdvm repeaters on the air connected to recycled commercial gear. I am not new to mmdvm's and have been running them since before Pi-Star came about. Of the mmdvm repeaters 3 are MTR2000's with two flavors of processors (Neo-Pi and Orange Pi). Recently I upgraded firmware on the STM32DV as there have been some updates to the code. What happens next is where the trouble starts. When configuring Pi-Star version 4.2.0 which is currently on the website with a Dashboard rev of Feb 2024 all works fine. (The only modification is increasing the UART baud rate to 500000 from 115200.) When I run the update to the April 2024 Dashboard mmdvmhost no longer communicates with the MODEM. The same scenario occurs with both the Neo-Pi and the Orange-Pi. To avoid killing the repeaters with the automatic updates I have reverted to Pi-Satr version 4.1.8 which runs fine just with the older OS. Originally, I thought it was something I did but this time I had two repeaters side by side on the bench and the exact same issue occurred.

[M1DNS]

For the rasp pi try the 4.3 beta which jas support for the newer faster baudrates.
For the other pi boards i dont think those images have been updated to support the faster rates.

Sent via smoke signals using my SM-G935F

[K1IMD]

Hi Andrew,
Well to start these are Neo-Pi (Nano-Pi) and Orange-Pi SBC's not RPis. With version 4.1.8 they both communicate with mmdvmhost fine with the UART speed of 500000 baud. However, with version 4.2.x they do not.

The RPi 3B+'s I have communicate with mmdvmhost fine with a UART speed 460800 baud with version 4.2.1 or 4.1.8.

As far as I know there is no version 4.3.x beta for Neo-Pi or Orange-Pi to try. Not that it matters but these are not hotspots they are repeaters.

73

[F5VMR]

I removed my original post as I thought that the BaudRate might have some bearing on why the Pi-Star fails to now communicate with the modem at ttyAMA0. However the MMDVHost includes the new baud rate and the correct port ttyAMA0. However on exploring the software further there has been added a symbolic link /dev/ttyAMA0 -> /dev/pts/1.

This effectively shuts off communication with the modem.

Using RaspberryPi2 with ZUM Radio 0.9

I'm currently using an alternative image (Which I dislike) and want to return to PiStar at the earliest opportunity.

[F5VMR]

I've just run it again, and now the link is to /dev/pts/0 - There is no serial configuration.
I of course tried raspi-config to force it, but immediately it resets on reboot to the above.

sudo cat /dev/ttyAMA0 has an empty result likewise /dev/pts/0

/dev/serial0 does not exist.

So I edited the /boot/config.txt adding the dtoverlay=disable-bt line, but I feel that some of these lines are superfluous or even counter to the requirement.

dtparam=i2c_arm=on
dtparam=spi=on
dtoverlay=disable-bt
dtparam=uart0=on
dtparam=uart1=on
temp_limit=75
enable_uart=1

However that said I rebooted the Pi and I know have a /dev/ttyAMA0 in the list. and pistar-find modem produces
pi-star@pi-star(ro):~$ sudo pistar-findmodem
Detected MMDVM Port: /dev/ttyAMA0 (GPIO) Baud: 460800 Protocol: V2
Modem Data: MMDVM 20221121 12.0000 MHz GitID #edd60ca
However it still would not connect to the modem. So in terminal I sudo nano /etc/mmdmvmhost and found that the file I had previously edited to Baudrate 460800 had reverted back to 115200.... So re-edited and resaved. and Pi-Star is now Whole Again.......

It took a while and more than a bit of previous experience with uart control to find the issue. I'm sure this will also help out a few others as well.

GB7HT Now back on Pi-Star..... Incidentally on 4.3.0 with bookworm and Pi2.

[Ai6bx]

I am having the same issue. Have you found a solution?

[K1IMD]

No I have not. I am running version 4.1.8 on the Orange Pi & Neo Pi which runs fine at 115200 and 500000 UART baud rate.


73
Jon
K1IMD