Thank you. I should do another video. I have gone even further with my experiment. I have added e ery US state's statewide talkgroup and every 5 digit talkgroup associated with that state. Plus all Canadian, UK, New Zealand, and Australia talkgroups. I think Kenwood i among running over 300 static talkgroups. The idea is to NOT put in super busy ones like 3100 or 91. They would totally monopolize the hotspot. A lot of not so busy talkgroups and it is a total potpourri of DMR from who knows where next! It has lead to some interesting local yokel QSO's both in US and abroad. The other night I "stumbled into" a QSO in the Northeast Mississippi talkgroup. Ended up in an all night QSO with 2 hams I would never stumbled across otherwise! Experiment! Push the limits!
You have a good point! The more I dig into this the more interesting it becomes. I will say this. This static talkgroup thing has produced some very interesting QSO's. As I was just monitoring my quiet static talkgroups last night, a call came out in Texas-Nexus DMR talkgroup that was maritime mobile in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently it was a HAM working on the ship. I never would have heard the guy if it weren't for static talkgroups. He sounded familiar with a 5 call and he said he remembers QSOing with me in Wisconsin state wide a few weeks ago. That talk group, you guessed it, happens to be another static talkgroup in my hotspot. What are the odds? I know I am obsessing about this subject, but I must admit this sure beats the connect one Reflector at a time method that is the only method on NXDN, P25, YSF, and DStar reflectors!
Love your videos. You do an excellent job explaining what is going on. I do wish your camera shot was more like a shared desktop rather than how your doing it but this does work. You do a very good job explaining your approach and most of your ideas I find work for me. Thanks
Thank you! I was wondering how to scan talk groups. Also, since you cannot run Ysf and DMR at the same time, setting up multiple profiles is a lot easier than changing the settings every time. Now, I must figure out how to add DMR+ reflectors to the radio and be able to monitor those.
Thank you Robert. I am unfamiliar with the DMR+ network. So far I run only Brandmeister and TGIF network. I also have experimented a little with XLX Reflectors.
Scanning suggests that it's listening to one after the other serially. I don't think there's anything going like that. It's just the first one wins and occupies your hotspot until a timeout after traffic stops. Then it's open again until the next Tx grabs you.The "profile" trick is interesting
BTW - you can manage the talkgroups in Brandmeister Selfcare as well - so you can, if you want, add or remove TGs from the 03 "profile" while you are using the 02 "profile". They are separate hotspots in the world of Brandmeister. It's just that they may not all be live/connected all the same time.
Perhaps scanning is not the word here, but when there is no traffic, it in some form searches for activity amongst the static talkgroups. I have no idea of the resume time or how quickly it picks up activity. Information about those specifics is very hard to find. I have searched online and no real definition of any of this seems to surface. That being said, I don't even have any idea how many static groups can be stored. I was surprised it took as many as it did. This was purely an experiment that arose from my curiosity. The profile thing was also an experiment. Here is another interesting discovery. If I leave that profile and then load that same 2 digit suffix in another hotspot on Brandmeister, all those static talkgroups transfer to the other hotspot. Even if the other hotspot is an Openspot. So in effect it is a stored profile on the Brandmeister database. You can even go to Brandmeister website and add or subtract the static groups. Either way it was so unexpected, I felt it was a very interesting "cool factor". In a mobile environment it could help in looking for activity without hunting and pecking one talkgroup at a time since looking at Brandmeister dashboard would be hard to do driving. I appreciate your comment and appreciate your watching.
I wish I could be more help. Roaming is a repeater function and I am a total hotspot addict! I dont store multiple repeater in memory because I am all about the hotspot. If you go to the Anytone 878 Facebook group, I bet someone in that group would be much better at articulating that and other repeater functions.
I reckon using the numbers 1 to 99, I could make a profile config page for DMR, YSF,TGIF, etc.. and upload each every time I want to change modes. Much faster than fiddling with a config file each time. Does that make sense?
An interesting observation: Once your hotspot hears activity on a static TG, it's "deaf" to all other static TGs but that one, for some extended time period. A "hold period," so to speak. That time period seems to vary from about 2 minutes to over 10 minutes (average: 5 min), after which time it can then receive other static TGs. Can you confirm? I used two DMR radios for the test... one listening to my hotspot and one transmitting through a local BM repeater on some of my pi-star static TGs.
That sounds about right. I find no documentation of what you describe, but mine also behaves in the way you describe. Sometimes it moves on more quickly than other times, and I really can't say why. If a QSO starts up in one and it stops there, it will park there for the entire QSO. After it is done, it does hang on to the silent talkgroup for a few minutes before it moves on. Clearly it is not the perfect scanner, but it does take me to talkgroups I would not normally key up and monitor dynamically.
@@k9wlwradio309 The behavior we have both observed and discussed here is beyond our control. We simply have to accept it as the way things work in BrandMeister. No, this is not the perfect scanner, but I already appreciate how handy and useful this little method will be. Thanks for sharing. Another excellent video.
Turns out, this delay is a documented feature in BrandMeister called the "hold-off" feature and is set to 5 minutes. See section 3) of: amateurradionotes.com/images/9-static_dynamic_auto-static.pdf
I use server 3102 and 5 minutes sounds about right. I would also say if I key up a dynamic talkgroup it comes front and center. If the traffic stops for about 5 minutes in the dynamic group, the talkgroup does go away and the static groups suddenly reappear. So the auto static described in that article doesn't hold the last dynamically keyed talkgroup hold on indefinitely. If I have zero dynamic talkgroups, the dynamics group seems to never go away. It does disappear from the dynamic talkgroup list but I hear traffic indefinitely from it. I connected to TG 91 one night before bed and had no static talkgroups programmed. I woke up the next day and 91 was still playing. Thanks for the link. It was a great article!
Hi Francis, i have followed your video to the letter, but when i key in a dynamic talkgroup, i am still receivng the static talkgroups that are programmed in. so they are obviousy interfering with the qso i am trying to have, the only difference is that i am using an anytone 868 rather than the 878, wonder if you have any suggestions. thank you John
If you key up a dynamic talkgroup with a quick PTT, look at the admin page of your hotspot. It should show your dynamic talkgroup listed on screen. As long as it remains there, it should keep the static talkgroups at bay. However, after a few minutes if monitoring, it will disappear and the static talkgroups will "take over the hotspot". If that happens, simply rekey the dynamic talkgroup. Now that being said, here is another trick that might help you. If you want to put the static talkgroups to the side for a longer time, go to the configuration screen and hit the drop down to the right of your DMR ID and change it to 01, 02, or anything else and hit apply changes. Then go back to the admin page and you will see the Static talkgroups are all gone. I store all my static talkgroups on the profile that shows up when I put 02 after my DMR ID. When I don't want them. I simply change to 01 or nothing or 03, etc and I keep them tucked away.
I have an Anytone D868UV. I understand where you are monitoring the Static Talkgroups. But what programming needs to be done with the radio to transmit on that active static talkgroup? KB3Z
A couple things have to be done the radio. 1: set the radio in Promiscuous mode so anything that comes out of the hotspot will be heard. I have another video on this channel on how to do that. 2: unlock the manual dial feature on the radio so you can manually dial any talkgroup randomly in the radio software. I have another video showing how to do that on the 878. I do not have 868 software., but you can compare how it works in my video to see if you can mimic the same features with your software. 3: see if the capture the talkgroup feature works on the 868. I have yet another video showing how to do that. If you can do all those things you can keyup what you want instantly without having to codeplug the radio at all. Look at those 3 videos on my channel and see if those features also work on the 868. Let me know if they make sense to you.
I have an Anytone 878, but must be missing a step. I added the BM Manager and added static talk groups. I can see the activity on the dashboard and my radio show receiving (green light and screen indicator) but no sound unless I switch the radio to that particular talkgroup.
Actually you are missing about 3 steps! The good news I have videos of those 3 steos! Step 1: find my video about Anytone 878 Promiscuous mode settings. Step 2: find my video on unlocking the manual dial features. Step 3: find my video on using the "Capture the Talkgroup feature". If you see those videos, you will hear any Talkgroup, be able to quickly manual dial to ANY random Talkgroup, and quick key into any heard random Talkgroup. I promise you it will blow the doors off codeplugs!
@@seanl6340 I hope it helps!. I love manual dialing, and never leave my radio OUT of Promiscuous mode. The capture the talkgroup feature comes in very handy for keying into static talkgroups! I have maybe 50 talkgroups programmed into the radio, and over 100 static talkgroups in the hotspot. The DMR radio almost never sleeps now!
@@k9wlwradio309 It did. The digital monitor was the step I missed. Manual dialing will be a help too. There is also a way to switch to the "heard" talkgroup by pressing the "*" key. Trying to work out the detail on that now.
@@seanl6340 the video on manual dial is what unlocks both the manual dial feature and the * feature that captures the talkgroup. It is in the radio software.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but after the api ending the password matches with BM, I tried adding TGs but my pistar says " No response" after clicking add.
Any luck saving the profiles on an OpenSpot 3 for a "memory bank" of static TG's for various profiles? I'm not sure how to save the TG's to the profiles with much luck.
I reckon using the numbers 1 to 99, I could make a profile config page for DMR, YSF,TGIF, etc.. and upload each every time I want to change modes. Much faster than fiddling with a config file each time. Does that make sense?
The ESSID numbers are unique to Brandmeister only in the context of this video. However if you are running multiple hotspots on TGIF, for example, you can different ESSID numbers as well. In YSF the ESSID does not come into play. Although the purpose of the ESSID was intended for multiple hotspots on 1 DMR network, a by product of it is to set up individual profiles with static talkgroups. I came across that benefit quite by accident!
Boy, your 2 videos are so worth while! Thanks.
Thank you. I should do another video. I have gone even further with my experiment. I have added e ery US state's statewide talkgroup and every 5 digit talkgroup associated with that state. Plus all Canadian, UK, New Zealand, and Australia talkgroups. I think Kenwood i among running over 300 static talkgroups. The idea is to NOT put in super busy ones like 3100 or 91. They would totally monopolize the hotspot. A lot of not so busy talkgroups and it is a total potpourri of DMR from who knows where next! It has lead to some interesting local yokel QSO's both in US and abroad. The other night I "stumbled into" a QSO in the Northeast Mississippi talkgroup. Ended up in an all night QSO with 2 hams I would never stumbled across otherwise! Experiment! Push the limits!
You have a good point! The more I dig into this the more interesting it becomes. I will say this. This static talkgroup thing has produced some very interesting QSO's. As I was just monitoring my quiet static talkgroups last night, a call came out in Texas-Nexus DMR talkgroup that was maritime mobile in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently it was a HAM working on the ship. I never would have heard the guy if it weren't for static talkgroups. He sounded familiar with a 5 call and he said he remembers QSOing with me in Wisconsin state wide a few weeks ago. That talk group, you guessed it, happens to be another static talkgroup in my hotspot. What are the odds? I know I am obsessing about this subject, but I must admit this sure beats the connect one Reflector at a time method that is the only method on NXDN, P25, YSF, and DStar reflectors!
Love your videos. You do an excellent job explaining what is going on. I do wish your camera shot was more like a shared desktop rather than how your doing it but this does work. You do a very good job explaining your approach and most of your ideas I find work for me. Thanks
Thank you. Someday I hope to get a mounted camera so I can go horizontal and free up both hands!
Thank you! I was wondering how to scan talk groups. Also, since you cannot run Ysf and DMR at the same time, setting up multiple profiles is a lot easier than changing the settings every time. Now, I must figure out how to add DMR+ reflectors to the radio and be able to monitor those.
Thank you Robert. I am unfamiliar with the DMR+ network. So far I run only Brandmeister and TGIF network. I also have experimented a little with XLX Reflectors.
Scanning suggests that it's listening to one after the other serially. I don't think there's anything going like that. It's just the first one wins and occupies your hotspot until a timeout after traffic stops. Then it's open again until the next Tx grabs you.The "profile" trick is interesting
BTW - you can manage the talkgroups in Brandmeister Selfcare as well - so you can, if you want, add or remove TGs from the 03 "profile" while you are using the 02 "profile". They are separate hotspots in the world of Brandmeister. It's just that they may not all be live/connected all the same time.
Perhaps scanning is not the word here, but when there is no traffic, it in some form searches for activity amongst the static talkgroups. I have no idea of the resume time or how quickly it picks up activity. Information about those specifics is very hard to find. I have searched online and no real definition of any of this seems to surface. That being said, I don't even have any idea how many static groups can be stored. I was surprised it took as many as it did. This was purely an experiment that arose from my curiosity. The profile thing was also an experiment. Here is another interesting discovery. If I leave that profile and then load that same 2 digit suffix in another hotspot on Brandmeister, all those static talkgroups transfer to the other hotspot. Even if the other hotspot is an Openspot. So in effect it is a stored profile on the Brandmeister database. You can even go to Brandmeister website and add or subtract the static groups. Either way it was so unexpected, I felt it was a very interesting "cool factor". In a mobile environment it could help in looking for activity without hunting and pecking one talkgroup at a time since looking at Brandmeister dashboard would be hard to do driving. I appreciate your comment and appreciate your watching.
Thank You . Great job! 73 M7LUK
Thank you for watching!
Hey There! I just picked up my anytone 878. Your videos are great! If your able to, could you make a video explaning Dmr roaming on the 878? 73 N4LLC
I wish I could be more help. Roaming is a repeater function and I am a total hotspot addict! I dont store multiple repeater in memory because I am all about the hotspot. If you go to the Anytone 878 Facebook group, I bet someone in that group would be much better at articulating that and other repeater functions.
I appreciate your watching and commenting.
@@k9wlwradio309 Thank you so much!
How do you program in a dynamic talk group? Or does it auto dynamic when you key the radio on a given talk group?
Dynamic groups activate by keying the group from a radio. They deactivate when you quick key a group call 4000.
I reckon using the numbers 1 to 99, I could make a profile config page for DMR, YSF,TGIF, etc.. and upload each every time I want to change modes. Much faster than fiddling with a config file each time. Does that make sense?
An interesting observation: Once your hotspot hears activity on a static TG, it's "deaf" to all other static TGs but that one, for some extended time period. A "hold period," so to speak. That time period seems to vary from about 2 minutes to over 10 minutes (average: 5 min), after which time it can then receive other static TGs. Can you confirm? I used two DMR radios for the test... one listening to my hotspot and one transmitting through a local BM repeater on some of my pi-star static TGs.
That sounds about right. I find no documentation of what you describe, but mine also behaves in the way you describe. Sometimes it moves on more quickly than other times, and I really can't say why. If a QSO starts up in one and it stops there, it will park there for the entire QSO. After it is done, it does hang on to the silent talkgroup for a few minutes before it moves on. Clearly it is not the perfect scanner, but it does take me to talkgroups I would not normally key up and monitor dynamically.
@@k9wlwradio309 The behavior we have both observed and discussed here is beyond our control. We simply have to accept it as the way things work in BrandMeister. No, this is not the perfect scanner, but I already appreciate how handy and useful this little method will be. Thanks for sharing. Another excellent video.
Turns out, this delay is a documented feature in BrandMeister called the "hold-off" feature and is set to 5 minutes.
See section 3) of: amateurradionotes.com/images/9-static_dynamic_auto-static.pdf
I use server 3102 and 5 minutes sounds about right. I would also say if I key up a dynamic talkgroup it comes front and center. If the traffic stops for about 5 minutes in the dynamic group, the talkgroup does go away and the static groups suddenly reappear. So the auto static described in that article doesn't hold the last dynamically keyed talkgroup hold on indefinitely. If I have zero dynamic talkgroups, the dynamics group seems to never go away. It does disappear from the dynamic talkgroup list but I hear traffic indefinitely from it. I connected to TG 91 one night before bed and had no static talkgroups programmed. I woke up the next day and 91 was still playing. Thanks for the link. It was a great article!
@@k9wlwradio309 I agree completely with this assessment. Thanks so much for all your thoughtful and detailed responses. 73, W5NED Neall.
Hi Francis, i have followed your video to the letter, but when i key in a dynamic talkgroup, i am still receivng the static talkgroups that are programmed in. so they are obviousy interfering with the qso i am trying to have, the only difference is that i am using an anytone 868 rather than the 878, wonder if you have any suggestions. thank you John
If you key up a dynamic talkgroup with a quick PTT, look at the admin page of your hotspot. It should show your dynamic talkgroup listed on screen. As long as it remains there, it should keep the static talkgroups at bay. However, after a few minutes if monitoring, it will disappear and the static talkgroups will "take over the hotspot". If that happens, simply rekey the dynamic talkgroup. Now that being said, here is another trick that might help you. If you want to put the static talkgroups to the side for a longer time, go to the configuration screen and hit the drop down to the right of your DMR ID and change it to 01, 02, or anything else and hit apply changes. Then go back to the admin page and you will see the Static talkgroups are all gone. I store all my static talkgroups on the profile that shows up when I put 02 after my DMR ID. When I don't want them. I simply change to 01 or nothing or 03, etc and I keep them tucked away.
I have an Anytone D868UV. I understand where you are monitoring the Static Talkgroups. But what programming needs to be done with the radio to transmit on that active static talkgroup? KB3Z
A couple things have to be done the radio. 1: set the radio in Promiscuous mode so anything that comes out of the hotspot will be heard. I have another video on this channel on how to do that. 2: unlock the manual dial feature on the radio so you can manually dial any talkgroup randomly in the radio software. I have another video showing how to do that on the 878. I do not have 868 software., but you can compare how it works in my video to see if you can mimic the same features with your software. 3: see if the capture the talkgroup feature works on the 868. I have yet another video showing how to do that. If you can do all those things you can keyup what you want instantly without having to codeplug the radio at all. Look at those 3 videos on my channel and see if those features also work on the 868. Let me know if they make sense to you.
I have an Anytone 878, but must be missing a step. I added the BM Manager and added static talk groups. I can see the activity on the dashboard and my radio show receiving (green light and screen indicator) but no sound unless I switch the radio to that particular talkgroup.
Actually you are missing about 3 steps! The good news I have videos of those 3 steos! Step 1: find my video about Anytone 878 Promiscuous mode settings. Step 2: find my video on unlocking the manual dial features. Step 3: find my video on using the "Capture the Talkgroup feature". If you see those videos, you will hear any Talkgroup, be able to quickly manual dial to ANY random Talkgroup, and quick key into any heard random Talkgroup. I promise you it will blow the doors off codeplugs!
@@k9wlwradio309 THANKS!
@@seanl6340 I hope it helps!. I love manual dialing, and never leave my radio OUT of Promiscuous mode. The capture the talkgroup feature comes in very handy for keying into static talkgroups! I have maybe 50 talkgroups programmed into the radio, and over 100 static talkgroups in the hotspot. The DMR radio almost never sleeps now!
@@k9wlwradio309 It did. The digital monitor was the step I missed. Manual dialing will be a help too. There is also a way to switch to the "heard" talkgroup by pressing the "*" key. Trying to work out the detail on that now.
@@seanl6340 the video on manual dial is what unlocks both the manual dial feature and the * feature that captures the talkgroup. It is in the radio software.
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but after the api ending the password matches with BM, I tried adding TGs but my pistar says " No response" after clicking add.
I can see 3001 from others and I can rf key into a TG and see it in my pistar.
Any luck saving the profiles on an OpenSpot 3 for a "memory bank" of static TG's for various profiles? I'm not sure how to save the TG's to the profiles with much luck.
Have you added the Brandmeister API code to your Openspot yet? If not, I can send you a video on how to do that.
Here is a video on how to set up a profile on the Openspot platform. czcams.com/video/krXBC8jpoag/video.html
Is this the same BM Manager built into the Open Spot 3?
Yes! You can load the API key there and it will allow static talkgroups to be added and deleted.
I reckon using the numbers 1 to 99, I could make a profile config page for DMR, YSF,TGIF, etc.. and upload each every time I want to change modes. Much faster than fiddling with a config file each time. Does that make sense?
The ESSID numbers are unique to Brandmeister only in the context of this video. However if you are running multiple hotspots on TGIF, for example, you can different ESSID numbers as well. In YSF the ESSID does not come into play. Although the purpose of the ESSID was intended for multiple hotspots on 1 DMR network, a by product of it is to set up individual profiles with static talkgroups. I came across that benefit quite by accident!
@@k9wlwradio309 Thanks