DV Gateways
MB6KW D-Star / DMR Gateway Build
The 70cm public gateway MB6IKW had been licensed to run on a Yaesu FT-817ND for a number of years. I decided to change to a PMR radio and purchased a Vertex VX-2100 which I believe Motorola brought out and so you may see it referred to as the Motorola VX-2100. I have been unable to get the gateway running with that radio so another Motorola, the GM340, was purchased as I had success with one on my personal gateway. Due to the UK licence change in February 2024 the callsign was changed by the RSGB ETCC from MB6IKW to MB6KW.
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If you have not had your radio pre-programmed for you and you are doing it yourself it is quite easy. Connect your programming lead to your radios microphone socket. Open up the Motorola CPS software then switch the radio on. Click on File then Read Device or the icon to the left of the open file icon to read the current configuration. Expand if necessary Per Radio and then click on Button Definition.
If necessary change any of the button definitions you need to. I have programmed buttons 1 and 2 for the same frequency but different powers for testing.
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Now close button definition and open Miscellaneous. On the Global tab make sure RX Audio (Accessory Connector) is set to Flat Unsquelched.
Select the Memory Power Up Channel tab and then set your designated power up channel.
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Select the Timers tab and define any Time Out Time you would like.
Close Per Radio Miscellaneous and open RF. Set your high and low power output.
Close the Per Radio RF and open the GP I/O Lines setting and change pin 3 to Data PTT and Active Level to low.
Close the Per Radio GP I/O Lines and open the Per Channel 1 of 2. On the TX/RX tab enter the TX and RX frequency which will both be the same for your simplex gateway. For a public gateway in the UK enter the frequency assigned to you on your Notice of Variation (NoV). In other countries refer to your licensing conditions and bandplan. Select your power level. You can create a second channel like I have with a different power setting for testing.
Select the PL/DPL tab and make sure the tones are disabled.
Close the Per Channel setting and now open the Per Personallity setting and set as below. Enable TX Time-Out Timer Mode if required. The time was set earlier if needed.
Click on the Squelch tab and set as below.
Click on the Audio tab and make sure the Voice Pre-emphasis/De-emphasis is not enabled.
Once you have made the necessary changes to the settings save to a file. Now upload to your radio by clicking on the icon to the right of the Save icon. Switch the radio off before removing the programming lead.
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The next step is to connect your modem to the radio. The GM340 has an unusual connector on the rear panel, unfortunately not a D connector.
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I have managed to find an accessory lead with the radio plug and a 25 way D-connector relatively cheap on Ebay so purchased that. Unfortunately it did not use all of the Motorola pins, RSSI being one of them if you wanted it.
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It was just a case of metering out the pins of the Motorola socket to see which ones I needed and fitting a mini-DIN socket.
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I chose to do this as the radio was not near the Zum Radio board and Pi and I could still use old lead that was used with the Yaesu FT-817ND. Also this would be compatible with my DV-Mega should I need to use it.
I'm assuming you will be using Pi-Star which is available for download from here. I will not cover formating an SD card or the download of Pi-Star itself as there is already plenty of information that covers this. Use the Pi-Star Wi-Fi builder tool and then drop the file on to your SD card after writing the image file. When you do start Pi-Star up remember to use your browser and the default address will be pi-star. If you have several Pi's you can change the host name once you are into the configuration screen.
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So once in the configuration screen the first thing you will need to do is select the Controller Software. For my public gateway I have used a MMDVM Modem as I wished to offer a D-Star and DMR service to local stations. I am mainly a D-Star user but also wanted to learn more about DMR. This is a simplex gateway so set the Controller Mode to Simplex. Click Apply Changes.
In the General Configuration section change the Host Name from pi-star if you want to. I have as I have several instances of Pi-Star running. Enter your callsign and the frequency you have programmed in to your radio. Follow your local band plan or enter your assigned frequency. All of this information is reported out on APRS. Now set your correct latitude and longtitude otherwise your station will be displayed in the English Channel along with a lot of other stations who have not set their co-ordinates. Go in to Google maps and click on your location or one nearby if you do not want your exact location displayed. On a PC at the bottom of the map you will see a small pop-up with the address of the location with your co-ordinates.
The UK licence changed in February 2024 and there is no longer a need for an NoV to run a gateway. This can now be done with a Frequency Assignment Certificate (FAC) which assigns a frequency of your choice following checks and assessments.
The Firewall Configuration settings can be set to Private and On.
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When complete click on Apply Changes before moving on.
On the next page you can select your radio or modem board.
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When using the Zum Radio Modem connected to the Raspberry Pi select the ZUM Radio-MMDVM for Pi (GPIO) as Pi-Star does not default to anything.
So once the modes have been selected and the modem chosen you need to configure each mode.
My gateway is on the Brandmeister network and so the DMR Master is set to BM_2341_United_Kingdom. Due to security issues Brandmeister requested users create their own unique password and not use the default one. To create this password you will need to create and or log in to your Brandmeister account. Once logged in click on User and then Selfcare, here you will be able to set your password.
Once created enter this password in the Hotspot Security . Your CCS7 / DMR ID will be displayed and should you use two hotspots it is recommended that you also use the additional number after your ID. Choose a colour code which your radio must be set to. Other options I leave as default.
As my gateway is on 70cm for D-Star I use the port identifier B. If you want your gateway to default to a reflector when switched on or when another times out select the one you want and select Startup.
Set all options in the Firewall configuration to Private and On. Auto AP is designed to provide a Wi-Fi connection for you if you loose your Wi-Fi connection. It will create it's own access point and use the SSID "Pi-Star-Setup" (default password is "raspberry") allowing you to access the dashboard, access it by it's default IP of 192.168.50.1. Once connected you can re-configure Wi-Fi or reboot. Apply changes before moving on.
When back to the Pi-Star configuration screen click on Configuration.
Then click on Expert to enter the advanced configuration.
The warning will be displayed as there are a lot of fields accessible from here that only advanced users should use. Many modifications can be made to the MMDVMHost settings from here. Select MMDVMHost.
You will now be in the following screen with information carried forward from when you entered your initial set-up but obviously with your callsign and DMR ID displayed, there should be no need to change anything with this information.
Scroll down the Expert section until you get to the section Modem. For the Motorola GM340 UHF you will need to set TXInvert to 0 and RXinvert to 0. These two settings vary from radio to radio, once set scroll down and Apply changes.
The radio and Pi-Star are now configured so the next stage is to check the receive and transmit on the D-Star radio.
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From the Pi-Star dashboard set the hotspot to REF001C or REF030C as there is a reasonable amount of traffic on these to listen to.
Program your D-Star radio to your gateway frequency (remember to set duplex with a zero offset) and hopefully you should hear some D-Star traffic, also monitor your Pi-Star dashboard to see when there is traffic but the gateway radio should be going into transmit. If you are not hearing someone speaking switch to FM and check you can hear a data transmission just to check you're wired correctly. Back to DV mode, check you have the Modem TXinvert set correctly. For the receive side transmit the letter "I" in the eigth character space of the Your Call Sign field to request the status of the link. Look at the Pi-Star dashboard and hopefully you will see some local RF Activity at the bottom of the screen displaying your callsign and the gateway will broadcast "Connected to" and the reflector you are conencted to. If not go back and check the RXinvert is set correctly. When you are happy with this set the eigth character to the letter "E", transmit with some audio and then the gateway will playback your audio. When you are happy with this change to "CQCQCQ" and put a call out on the reflector.
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My Zum Radio Modem worked fine with the Yaesu radios without any adjustment to the levels but you may need to adjust them. Ideally these should be set up with test equipment on the users radio and the gateway radio. A quick way is to set Pi-Star to a busy reflector and see if you can hear the transmission if not make small changes to the TX level on the modem.
Similarly for receive transmit the letter "I" to request the status of the link and slowly adjust the RX level on the modem until you see some RF Activity on the dashboard. You may need to repeat this several times until you hear the "Connected to..." transmission.
When you are happy with this transmit the letter "E" and speak, after the gateway will playback your audio. When you are happy with this change to "CQCQCQ" and put a call out on the reflector.
If you are using another radio, follow the instructions for testing the setup but if necessary change the TXinvert and the RXinvert fields. Do one at a time and test before moving on.
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​D-Star is quite a tolerant mode when it come to setting up the modem board and you are more than likely to have issues with DMR. I cannot comment for Yaesu Fusion as I do not have any radios to test this mode. If the D-Star part of the gateway works the settings should not be too far off for DMR. Again use a similar method to the quick set up above.
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​​This 70cm gateway runs on a Comet CX-725 tri-band antenna at 8m a.g.l.