DMR ⁽²⁾

The latest addition to the shack is a Connect Systems Inc CS7000-M17 Plus hand held radio. I got this because of interest in the M17 mode - see https://m17foundation.org/ generally for information. The radio came from KB Cubed in the US (https://www.kbcubed.com/), not solely because the price had been reduced but also they were able to ship to the UK whereas other suppliers could not, or as far as I found anyway. It comes with a USB programming lead that attaches to the side once a cover is removed. However, as it came with the M17 mode already installed I have not yet needed this. The radio, being the Plus model will also do DMR which means I may no longer need the MD380 but I have yet to try this out. As there is no M17 activity around here I also needed a hotspot. I run the excellent pi-star package for DMR and POCSAG but there is a future issue - the main branch of the MMDVM software will no longer support M17 and once pi-star updates my hotspot would cease to function. As there is a WPSD branch with M17 retained I decided to set up a hotspot…

Given there is a new DV gateway on 70cm near my QTH I wanted to add it to the MD380. The first issue is I had completely forgotten how! Remarkably, the radio has plenty of battery so it was duly plugged into the Windows PC via the TYT USB lead. The TYT software failed to find the radio and on checking Device Manager it showed no driver. Off to the web to find one. Nope. I found a link to nowhere, found a driver that didn't work, and another which would not even install. By now I was beginning to remember things about code plugs... Off to the Linux box then. I found Editcp with with that I found my memory! I had used this before but DMR isn't really my thing these days so it sort of fell off the disk when I upgraded PCs a couple of years ago. Anyway, Editcp found the radio without fuss and downloaded it. After remmebering all the places one needs to add stuff to add a single chanel I had oen set up for the new local gateway. But I can't get in... perhaps it is just too far. I tried via…