For those who do not know, watch the above video. In the latest unbox topic I showed you a small Chinese Hotspot that I imported to mainly use on the DMR Network. I put the unit together on a small Raspberry Pi Zero board and fitted it to the aluminum case that came with the unit. The setup took quite some time as it is a learning curve for me. I tried to calibrate the unit for RX and TX. Now not having all the test equipment it was like a hit and run exercise. I used the included calibrating firmware but find that the Raspberry Pi Zero was slow on rebooting every time you changed a parameter. I had a Raspberry Pi 3 lying around and decided to mount the Hotspot PCB to the PI 3. This made a big difference and the reboot time was fast and most welcome. Now apart from calibrating the Hotspot I also decided to write my own codeplug for the TYT MD380. I started by adding a Hotspot-, Echotest- and TG 91 Digital Contacts. The Hotspot contact was for calibration, the Echotest to test my audio once the Hotspot was in operation and the TG 91 was to listen and TX to the outside world. It took me quite a few hours to get everything working in "tandem" but I succeeded and now have an operational DMR setup. There are still lots to be done and also to learn but at least I can now use my DMR radios. I do have a few plans for the future, one is to build a DMR to AllStar bridge for use on the GRHub Network. More on this in a future post. Below are a few images of the working ZS1I Hotspot.
