The Amateur Radio Digital Wars

The Amateur Radio Digital Wars

Top 3 Ham digitals ::
- ICOM - DStar
- Yaesu - Fusion aka C4FM
- DMR (digital mobile radio aka Mototrbo) - many companies producing transceivers - DMR :fragments: BrandMeister, DMRplus, Mototrbo/MARC
** Excluded :  NXDN, pDmr, P25, ect.


IMPORTANT FACT:

Interconnection :  when talking about all of the digitals, none communicate with each other.  A basic understanding is none of the different digitals talk together.

Frequency :  All digitals use Amateur Radio frequencies same as Analog FM - VHF or UHF frequency band, in handheld/portable or mobile or base configuration

Cost saving :  only one of the three digital has many many companies producing Transceiver. The other two * only have (1) one producer of transceivers.  The cost of a DMR transceiver abt. $100 or a fifth to the other two digitals of about $500 per transceiver

Most popular :  the first to market digital was DStar and since is the largest in the market, however with  DMR manufacturers offering a large selection of affordable transceiver.   DMR has grown in the market of multiples of 10x year over year.   The third digital is Yaesu and has very slow growth.

Summary : they are all interesting , however DMR is the clear winner.

* Kenwood TH-D74 DStar transceiver

DMR Plus North America - DMR-MARC and DMR Plus partnership

DMR Plus is the original network that developed tools to interconnect Hytera and Motorola repeaters. It has been popular in Europe for years but now, with the cooperation of DMR-MARC, it has finally arrived in North America and the South Pacific. The DMR Plus architecture is similar to D-Star. Users have talkgroups to converse, to disconnect, and to monitor channel status. Users choose from a large pool of reflectors and move back to the converse talkgroup for all QSOs.

The DMR-MARC and DMR Plus partnership is ideal. The DMR-MARC network is robust and reliable. The DMR Plus network is more aligned with experimentation and interoperability of technologies. Think of DMR Plus as the best possible implementation of the former DMR-MARC Sandbox.

Canada DMR Net - Canada TALKGROUP 302 and BrandMeister TALKGROUP 302 Link

Canada DMR Net - Canada DMR-MARC TALKGROUP 302 and BrandMeister TALKGROUP 302 Link.

DRAFT.....

The comments within is a discussion about DMR-MARC Canada TALKGROUP 302 and BrandMeister TALKGROUP 302 Linking and connecting together.

The linking of the two talkgroups together should also consider malicious action and how to prevent, a proactive consideration in the event it occurs or as it is currently happening on one Toronto VA3XPR repeater.  Such as dropping a repeater link out of the connection ... may not be adopted

Also hoping to open the Access with DV4MINI / DVMEGA / SHARKRF to the DMR-MARC Canada Net discussion .

QRZ.COM Logging of Repeater Contact DMR | BrandMeister | Fusion repeater/wiresx

I was wondering why when logging a contact in QRZ.COM, there is not an entry for fusion/wiresx, but DSTAR there is an option?

QRZ.COM has "DIGITALVOICE" as a mode. Are digitals (Fusion, Dstar, Dmr). QRZ.COM has a unique option for DSTAR.

ADI files must conform with the latest revision of ADIF protocol; the acceptable mode enumerations are as listed here: ADIF protocol;

http://www.adif.org/304/ADIF_304.htm#Mode_Enumeration

Fusion/wiresx has yet to be adopted and also DMR and BrandMeister.

As I write this, it's the second non-pinned thread on QRZ forum: "ADI files must conform with the latest revision of ADIF protocol... Fusion/wiresx[/DMR] has yet to be adopted."

Intro to DMR

This is a forum from the 2015 Dayton Hamvention, introducing you to the DMR - Digital Mobile Radio (aka MotoTRBO) - a digital voice mode for VHF/UHF that is becoming more and more popular in Amateur Radio. The forum is presented by John Burningham W2XAB. John won't take you all the way through programming a radio, but he'll make you knowledgeable enough to take the next step if you get interested.

Electricity Cost Per Minute on DMR-MARC Network

Electricity Cost Per Minute on DMR-MARC Network

[MOTOTRBO] Cost projection on DMR based on breadth of the TG site coverage.

I got bored, took the local 'pyramid' of talk group repeater count spread, applied the electrical costs for a repeater at 45W transmit, and multiplied that out over increasing talkgroup repeater counts.

Kind of interesting, basically 20min of tx time on North America roughs out at $4 in electricity consumption alone.

I did this as a tool to show people the significance of minimizing the reach of the talk group used to make a contact.

Intro - Why?

Electricity Cost Per Minute While Transmitting on the DMR-MARC/NEDECN Network - de KC2RGW 11/15/2015 rev.2.1

So out of boredom I was wondering what it actually costs in electricity when you multiply the effect of a user transmitting on the DMR-MARC network (NEDECN biased). I’m doing this as an illustrative tool for people to think about how they use the network from a localization and least number of repeaters impact to make their contacts.

This isn’t meant as any sort of environmental impact statement or even one that is very specific to DMR technology. It is however specific to DMR in the way a single user has power and leverage over a vast network of resources. Site per site, if anything, DMR should be more efficient than analog due to efficiency of throughput with TDMA and the lower duty cycle of the mode.

Metrics

Single repeater power consumption:

• A Motorola 8400 repeater runs at roughly 120V AC @ 4A on transmit

• Taken from Motorola’s data sheet

• This works out to 480W consumption.

• So a revision here...at 45W output we had a site owner measure actual consumption at 144W with a Kill-A-Watt meter on the source. Figures have been dropped to reflect this.

• I used $0.12 kW/hr as a rough cost for power

• This is lower than it is locally, but national avg is $0.10 kW/hr
• I adjusted to $0.10 kW/hr in the revision as well but remember, some areas are over $0.15 kW/hr

• The cost per hour in transmit mode is about $0.0144 <- revised as well
• This works out to $0.00024/minute for a single repeater while it is in transmit

Benefits of DMR | Introduction to DMR

DMR [Ontario] UHF Net

DMR NET - START
Starting :  November 2015
Date :  Sunday Nights at 9:00 p.m

Notification to be sent out to all Repeater Owner to share with local users two weeks before the Start : November 2015

DMR Ontario UHF Net
http://dmrnet.blogspot.ca/  ...please vote.

 

 .

Hytera repeater network is NOT part of DMR-MARC

The Hytera repeater network is NOT part of DMR-MARC, nor will it ever be. That is an independent DMR network with an incompatible IPSC platform. MotoTRBO repeaters are required for all DMR-MARC affiliates.

Read from : DMR-Marc.net
http://www.dmr-marc.net/repeaters.html

An interesting breakdown of DMR membership by country

An interesting breakdown of DMR membership by country

Summary of files containing DMR IDs and Callsigns grouped by Country

Brought to you by VA3AGV, Last updated: 2015-09-21

Full list::
DMR-MARC Network - http://dmrnetwork.blogspot.com/

------ -------------------------------------------------
IDs Country
------ -------------------------------------------------
1 DMR-Contacts ALGERIA
1 DMR Contacts ARGENTINA-REPUBLIC
233 DMR Contacts AUSTRALIA
457 DMR Contacts AUSTRIA
1 DMR Contacts BAHAMAS
423 DMR Contacts BELGIUM
3 DMR Contacts BELIZE
2 DMR Contacts BOSNIA-AND-HERCEGOVI
40 DMR Contacts BRASIL-BRAZIL
3 DMR Contacts BULGARIA
5 DMR Contacts BULGARIEN
37 DMR Contacts CANADA ALBERTA
61 DMR Contacts CANADA BRITISH-COLUMBIA
17 DMR Contacts CANADA MANITOBA
24 DMR Contacts CANADA NEW-BRUNSWICK
1 DMR Contacts CANADA NEWFOUNDLAND
3 DMR Contacts CANADA NOVA-SCOTIA
373 DMR Contacts CANADA ONTARIO
1 DMR Contacts CANADA PRINCE-EDWARD-ISLAND
120 DMR Contacts CANADA QUEBEC
637 DMR Contacts CANADA
101 DMR Contacts CHILE
286 DMR Contacts CHINA
1 DMR Contacts COLOMBIA

DMR/MotoTRBO at MicroHAMS Digital Conference 2015

UHF digital hotspot It support D-Star DMR and C4FM

For those interested in digital communications, like D-Star, DMR and C4FM there’s a new dongle who will be coming out soon. I was lucky enough to get 2 of them earlier, you will find bellow the first video and my first tests with the DV4mini. I made a C4FM link with 2 sticks between a simplex frequency and my repeater through the Internet. With two sticks I’m able to reach my repeater from any Internet connection without losing any information (data). I did my first D-Star test this afternoon with success, stay tune for the video.

This is a great UHF digital hotspot. It’s support D-Star DMR and C4FM.  
Very promising technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oYpyrjcXBc

Digital Voice Standards - MicroHAMS Digital Conference 2015

John Hays from Northwest Digital Radio, does a great job of comparing the major digital voice options we have for Amateur Radio. He covers D-Star, DMR, System Fusion from Yaesu and the only Open Source option: FreeDV. The first three all use the same AMBE vocoder so these systems have a lot in common. Even so, they are not too compatible.

But John has a treat for us. He has developed a controller board that will all the Yaesu DR-1X System Fusion Repeater to upgrade from Dual-Mode to Tri-Mode and run D-Star, System Fusion and traditional Analog FM all in one box. Scrub ahead to 42:16 if you want to dive right into this part of his talk.