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brian.waterworth
Nov 3

Configure APRS for Anytone 878 DMR and Pi-Star

4 comments

Configuring the Anytone 878 and Pi-Star to pass and receive APRS traffic for either Digital APRS or Analogue APRS can be a bit challenging. There are youtube videos; some are good, some are not. I watched many :-). I decided to piece together the best of what I watched and read to help me remember what I learned. I am getting older and being able to retain configuration I do infrequently posses a challenge.

 

I hope this guide (see attached) provides you with the necessary information to configure your Digital APRS and Pi-Star successfully. Hope to see you on http://aprs.fi .

 

Anytone 878 APRS and Pi-Star Configpdf

 

regards,

Brian Waterworth

VE3IBW

Mike VA3MCT
Nov 3

Brian,

 

I'll watch the video and maybe my question will be answered there, but what is the difference between Analog APRS and Digital APRS, since APRS is all digital anyway? Are they actually transmitted on the same frequency? 144.390MHz?

 

Mike

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brian.waterworth
Nov 3

You are right, APRS is indeed digital within and at the gates to the aprs-is network. How that digital signal gets there is the difference. I have another diagram I can post that shows this better. The concept of digital APRS as I contrast it to analogue is that digital aprs flows through the same DMR network as voice packets. DMR APRS is sent as a DMR SMS message and is routed to the aprs-is gateway that brandmeister maintains on each of its master servers. Also there is no standard frequency nor digipeating capability such as found with analogue APRS. As long as the DMR network allows for APRS traffic, you can be connected to any DMR repeater or hotspot frequency And send APRS packets to aprs-is.

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brian.waterworth
Nov 3

Here is a document to help show the flow of APRS messages. There are two examples. The first is from analogue to DMR. The second is from DMR to analogue. As we will learn, briefly, at Tuesday's club meeting (Nov 2019), most DMR networks do not pass APRS traffic. However, the most popular DMR Network (my opinion), Brandmeister, does allow APRS traffic.

 

BM DMR SMS-APRSpdf

 

regards,

Brian Waterworth

VE3IBW

 

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Mike VA3MCT
Nov 3

OK, so APRS data just gets sent along with all of the other packets of data that are already being sent with voice content, hence no other specific frequency required. Understood, thanks for clarification. Neat!

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New Posts
  • brian.waterworth
    Nov 6

    DMR Networks

    This post has the PDF document Brian (VE3IBW) presented to the club on Nov 5, 2019. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment on this post and I will endeavour to answer your questions. regards, Brian Waterworth VE3IBW
  • brian.waterworth
    Nov 3

    Bridging DMR and YSF together

    The YRARC club now has access to Yaseu System Fusion and DMR repeaters in York Region. We are quite fortunate that these repeaters are high enough to cover York and adjacent regions. But not all our club members will have both types of digital radios. Fortunately, there are DMR to YSF (and vice versa) bridging technologies that allow our club members to converse with others in and around the Ontario region. There are even bridges to converse more widely (US, Australia, Europe, even WW). Since I have elected at this time to invest and use DMR, I wrote the attached guide from the perspective of Pi-Star and my DMR HT (Anytone 878). The main focus of this guide, though, is toward Pi-Star configuration and less so on the DMR radio used. I think a YSF user would be able to figure out how to configure their radio and Pi-Star to do the reverse without a lot of effort. However, I am agreeable to create another guide, if there is a demand, to configure Pi-Star for YSF2DMR bridging. For now, I will focus on the DMR2YSF Bridging. regards, Brian Waterworth VE3IBW
  • brian.waterworth
    Oct 4

    Which MMDVM hat did we buy?

    After the DMR Quick Start presentation, Eric (VE3EB) and I (VE3IBW) had many inquiries about which MMDVM hat for a Raspberry Pi that we bought to make our Digital Hotspots. MMDVM_HS_Dual_Hat Duplex MMDVM Hotspot P25 DMR YSF NXDN Pi Revision 1.3 + OLED On eBay: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/173398296164 The fun thing about this RPi Hat is that it is a duplex board and supports five modes: D-Star, DMR, YSF, NXDN, P25. Duplex MMDVM boards give your hotspot a repeater feel and allows you to transmit on one DMR Time Slot while the other one is in use. Very handy for sending a message to TG 4000 to end a QSO on a busy TS. There are simplex boards too that cost less. This MMDVM hat comes with a very small OLED screen already soldered onto the board. Handy and fun to see who is talking and the IP address of the RPi when on your QTH network. The hat is purported to support all RPi models. It plugs into the GPIO bus of the RPi. I use an RPi 3A+ for its speed, memory footprint, and low power draw. Some others in the club prefer a 3B+ or 4 because it has an ethernet jack. I bought the RPi at Elmwood in Toronto. Had to pay shipping, but the overall cost was quite cheap. Whatever mode you choose, having a gateway onto the various Digital Amateur networks (and there are many) makes these digital modes a lot more fun. regards, Brian VE3IBW