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Carrying DMR/YSF traffic over AREDN with no internet required

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KD5RXT
Carrying DMR/YSF traffic over AREDN with no internet required
Two presentations were made at the 2018 Cowtown Hamfest in Fort Worth, TX on Saturday January 20th, 2018 by Mark J Culross, KD5RXT.

The presentations were as follows:

Title:  Emergency Communications Using DMR Over the MESH Network With No Internet Required
Synopsis: This presentation addressed the utilization of DMR radios for digital voice communications over a widely distributed MESH network. This capability can be accomplished completely independent of the internet, making it ideal for use in emergency communications situations. After reviewing this presentation, you will have learned which equipment is required and which useful capabilities that properly configured equipment will put at your disposal.

Title:  Emergency Communications Using YSF Over the MESH Network With No Internet Required
Synopsis: This presentation addressed the utilization of YSF radios for digital voice communications over a widely distributed MESH network. This capability can be accomplished completely independent of the internet, making it ideal for use in emergency communications situations. After reviewing this presentation, you will have learned which equipment is required and which useful capabilities that properly configured equipment will put at your disposal.
 
PDF copies of my 2018 Cowtown Hamfest presentations & the detailed walk-thru document (as well as my presentations from prior year Cowtown Hamfests) are now available at the following link to my Google Drive:
 
 
Please feel free to distribute this link to anyone who might be interested.  Please avoid distributing the documents themselves.  That way, if/when I update the documents, the link will always lead to the latest versions.  Let me know if you have any other questions.  Please feel free to use any of this information, and if you do, please give attribution to our K5COW Cowtown Amateur Radio Club in Fort Worth, TX.
 
Mark J Culross
KD5RXT
KD5RXT
Ham Radio 2.0 video of DMR over MESH presentation
The video of my first presentation from the 2018 Cowtown Hamfest ("Emergency Communications Using DMR over The MESH Network With No Internet Required") was recorded by Jason KC5HWB & is available at the following link:
 
 
Feel free to distribute to anyone who might be interested.
 
Mark J Culross
KD5RXT
 
WU2S
WU2S's picture
Thank you
Mark, thank you for making your presentation and documents available.
K5DLQ
K5DLQ's picture
Thanks Mark.  Nice work.
Thanks Mark.  Nice work.

The link to HR2.0 is also on our home page under the Announcement section down the page....

 
WL7COO
WL7COO's picture
Mark, ditto the above "Thanks". I found your CowTown

 Presentation very useful.  (Andre,  per postscript - original EOM @ 12 words)

I probably should have, but haven't yet, searched the AREDN Forums to see if there are other AREDN  Islands in use connecting DMR repeaters like the four Turlock Amateur Radio Club's W6BXN DMR repeaters.  


Thanks to TARC's hard working Repeater Crew's adoption of AREDN technology with support from Merced ARES and other  SJV-MESH Heads  from 3 Counties,  coupled with rapidly growing interest in DMR within TARC and other nearby ARCs,  in addition to the pre-existing Analog Repeater Control access, there have been two wide area coverage DMR Repeaters operating on Mt Bullion in Mariposa County CA (one ea UHF and VHF),   one  wide area coverage UHF DMR Repeater on Mt. Oso in Stanislaus County CA and one in low level UHF  with very good coverage in downtown Turlock CA (also Stan County)  that have been using AREDN for more than a month along with at least one openSPOT, all  using two  two different AREDN Gateways to the Internet and the same Master Server for the 4 repeaters with the Master Server de jour per my whimsy for the openSPOT. 

What do you think Mark (& all):
Is it timely to request a "DMR via AREDN" equivalent to the AREDN Regional 'Forums'?
Will DMR generally, become arednt about AREDN, as an endorsement of the EmComm utility inherent in the collaboration?
Will there be AREDN sub-forums for discussing various kinds of repeaters, reflectors and hotspots communicating via AREDN as the ultimate 'reach out' enabler?  (... & we could use the Internet as a backup<g>  ....ouch)

Will there be a " DMR via AREDN" weekly DMR net  (which could convene on a Brandmeister AREDN TG) to share ideas, troubleshoot & enhance DMR specific AREDN and AREDN specifc DMR,  interoperability details?

Above questions submitted for consideration by:
A proud Founding Member of the now successful & therefore defunct  'Keep the AnyTone D868UV callsign display RED and on the top line movement with yesterday's drop of the FW/CPS  2.24/1.24 General Release!

73, de ...dan 11060907 / wl7coo ARRL SJV ASEC
Andre et-al,  Yes, I could have made this a one-liner, it did start that way but .... I just couldn't - my conscience wouldn't let medevil.
.....do I have to mod the HTML source of this editor,  paste from Word or post comments as images to make my Amateur callsign red on this forum?

DL4FLY
DL4FLY's picture
Local DMR with Pi-Star hotspots, more easy

After reading and stepping over Marks great presentation, I tried to setup the commonly used Pi-Star hotspots.
I wrote a small how-to for installing the basic Pi-Star hotspot, setting up HBLink on a separate RaspberryPi and using several hotspots with AREDN as a local DMR network.
HBLink is written in python, python is aviable for OpenWRT, maybe this could be a future software feature for the new Mikrotik hardware...

Here is the how-to I wrote today:
http://pyrotech.de/dl4fly/pistar-localdmr_how_to_DL4FLY.pdf

73 Timm DL4FLY

AE6XE
AE6XE's picture
Python would have a heavy
Python would have a heavy footprint for use in an embedded device.  perl used today has the same concerns.  Openwrt started using Lua to reduce this RAM and Flash footprint, and some functionality has moved to Lua as we transition to also reduce the footprint.   

it would be best to do add-on package installs to the hAP lite to try this out, and document for others.  With 16MB Flash and 64MB RAM, the hAP lite may be able to support HPLink, but given this is not core functionality for a mesh node and limited users, would not be good to consume the resources as part of a release.

Joe AE6XE
KB9OIV
This is a great write-up.
This is a great write-up. I plan to test this out on our local mesh. This should be runnable on the same pi as pistar, just chose a port number that is available. There is python3 hblink scripts available that have extra bridging function now, too. Check out this YouTube series: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LsqdO0xRjoQ

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