PiStar Digital Hotspot

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 Its been a year since I got sucked down the ham radio rabbit hole.  There seems to be no end in sight.  As proof I recently bought a ZUMspot digital hostpot kit with nextion 3.5 display.  This is a Raspberry PI based MMDVM - multi-mode-digital-voice-modem.  

The hotspot connects to the internet via wi-fi, and acts as a personal repeater that you can use to talk to other amateur stations all over the world with your handy-talkie.   I mostly have this set to AmericaLink (Yaesu System Fusion) but I also registered for a DMR-ID thru RadioID.Net.  

Configuration was pretty straight forward, and the hotspot is fun to play with.  Open pi-star.local in a browser.  Depending on the OS (I'm using linux) you might have a different URL.  Connect to the local pstar-setup SSID on the hotspot using the default userid and password.  Also, let the pi-star run thru as many updates as needed to get to current.  I'm at v4.1.4.

Once you have configured the hotspot to connect to your local wifi, just reboot the p-star return to the home page and set up General Configurations, Hostname, Callsign, Lat/Long, Location etc.  Most importantly set up a radio-frequency for the hotspot to use that will not cause interference.  This is the frequency you'll hit for TX/RX from your handy talkie.  I'm using 438.8Mhz.

I was able to make some quick contacts in Scotland, Germany, and heard many others on America link. 

Although after a few weeks I admit I don't use it very much but I'm very glad I have it.  Was a fun side project that I needed to explore and might have need to use in the future!




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