W8EMV - Whiskey Eight Echo Mike Victor

A reminder to set your password on your MMDVM hotspot

My DMR hotspot was silent for some time because I had neglected to update it with a newly required password.

The Brandmeister network article on hotspot security has the detail that you need to carry this out. You'll want the "hotspot security" section of the "SelfCare" setting at Brandmeister, and on the MMDVM side the menu option is under "Configuration" / "Hotspot Security".

It took but a moment and now all is well again.

Listening to DMR on OpenWebRX

My notes such as they are say that I had OpenWebRX running last year around this time, but the 2019 experience was not accompanied by blogging and I have forgotten what I learned.

This year's install was very simple, using the Debian install instructions and then systemd to start and stop and reload the system.

The 2020 OpenWebRX setup has a lot more digital modes supported, and I was able to successfully decode a transmission from Ralph AA8RK this morning. I was listening on 443.5 (the output frequency of the W8RP DMR repeater) with my setup, which includes a Nooelec RTL-SDR tuner and a 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4. Miraculously, the DMR decoder picked up not just Ralph's voice but also decoded his call sign and channel number.

One funny thing about this repeater setup is that from time to time it will send out a short burst of traffic that OpenWebRX can't decode, see below for that.