Fun with Digital Voice Dongles and Multi-Mode MMDVM Hotspots

Quite a long time ago, Robin, AA4RC gave me a DV Dongle that he had recently developed. It was amazing! It enabled something that wasn’t possible before. With the DV Dongle connected to my Mac, I could monitor the activity on remote D-STAR gateways and talk to folks on the world-wide the D-STAR system without a radio.

Later on Robin’s company, Internet Labs, created the first DV Access Point (DVAP) dongle. This enabled access to the world-wide D-STAR network through a radio from anywhere you have Internet access. It enabled me to keep in touch and have fun on D-STAR while traveling, using my laptop, hotel Internet, and my D-STAR handie-talkie. It was very cool.

Paired with a Raspberry Pi Computer, the DVAP + RPi makes a very slick portable package.

A few years later, others started marketing similar products. Darren, G7LWT/AK4DB sent me a DV4M aka DV4 Mini dongle out of the blue (surprise!) that was even smaller than the DV Dongle and DVAP. It has an integrated USB A connector so you can just plug it into your laptop and you’ve got a hot spot to use with your handie-talkie(s) not only for D-STAR, but it works on other modes like DMR and C4FM/Fusion as well!

Internet Labs came later came out with the DV3K based on the AMBE 3000 chip from DVSI. It also has an integrated USB A connector and is used with the DV Tool application on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Last October, 2018, Terry, N8LN sent me a ZumSpot and a nice lexan enclosure for it. The ZumSpot is a “MMDVM” Multi-Mode Digital Voice Modem based hot spot that runs on Raspberry Pi. It is the same form-factor as the Raspberry Pi Zero W and makes a nice little hot spot running under the “Pi-Star” software. Pi-Star is a collection of underlying software that implement D-STAR, DMR, and Yaesu System Fusion protocols.

I started hearing about folks adding Nextion displays to their hot spots and I thought that would be a great idea! I bought an enhanced 3.2″ Nextion display from Amazon and wired it up to the RPi’s UART via the ZumSpot board, -et voilà !, I now have a display!

I designed a case and shelf-mounting bracket using Sketchup and printed them on my 3D printer.

ZumSpot Nextion Home Screen

Once I figured out the Nextion Editor, I was able to customize the screen with a photo of my friends dogs, Dutchess and Venus from a trip we took to Monterey in November, 2018

I built some other smaller hot spots using smaller Nextion displays and JumboSpot MMDVM modems.

Pi-Star enabled Jumbspot HotSpots running YSF and D-STAR

My latest hot spot is a JumboSpot with an “OLED” display. It’s tiny at 75x40x20mm! The back cover doubles as a mounting bracket for under-the-shelf mounting. I’ve also created flat and and triangular back covers for different mounting/usage options.

I included openings for access to the power, USB, and HDMI ports so you can actually attach a keyboard, mouse and monitor to this tiny hotspot to have a full-blow workstation with a Single-Core 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM, 802.11n wireless LAN and a 16GB micro SD card.

If you’re in the market for a hotspot, I recommend you buy one that’s sold by and supported by Hams. The ZumSpot is a good example. The “Jumbospot” hotspots that are sold on ebay and Amazon are copies and the manufacturers of these do not always adhere to the Creative Commons licensing agreement provided by the designers of the hardware.

Inside views, etc.


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