Here's the worst thing about editing a #DMR codeplug: realizing about 80% of the way through of your original plan that there's a smarter way to organize it and realizing you're going to have to give into the whimsy of doing that at some point.

But for now, the temporary solution is just gonna be throwing in the #DMR repeaters and talkgroups and having some fun with it.

#FreshHam #MD380

Editing a codeplug is maybe the most tedious thing about #DMR. I suppose the good news is I'll only have to build it out further, getting all the stuff in there in the first place is kinda the hard part.

On the bright side, I've got all the analog repeaters within 100 miles of home programmed, and since I rarely go further than that, I can just add them as needed.

And now, onto the DMR repeaters/channels.

#MD380 #FreshHam

Repeater allows kerchunking on TS2 to access a given channel according to #DMRTexas, but TS2 is listed as a static local channel on #Brandmeister.

So I just programmed everything with both timeslots and figure I'll monkey around with it when I'm trying to broadcast and figure out which one is true, then submit a correction to DMRTexas if necessary.

#DMR #MD380

One of the fun things about programming a #DMR codeplug that isn't actually fun: finding a source of truth.

Repeaterbook says a nearby repeater isn't DMR at all, but it's listed on DMRTexas.net. It's also listed on Brandmeister and DMR-MARC.

Repeaterbook info is from 2017, so we can throw that out.

DMRTexas is from 2021, which is better. One of the local talk groups is listed in TS!, so I program that.

Brandmeister's 'Last Heard' shows it's active on DMR, but the above TG is TS1.

#MD380

(I'm mostly typing all this out to sorta cement my understanding myself. Sorry if I'm spamming things, but thought it might hopefully help other people.)

So here's how I'm planning to set this up.

First, I'll have a simplex zone (Simplex 99) that just gives me all the digital and analog simplex freqs I'll be using. Easy enough.

Analog repeaters will get lumped into zones corresponding to home, work, whatever travelling I do.

#DMR #MD380

Zones - So here's the thing: zones are just memory banks. You can have 250 of them, each with 16 channels.

See that little center knob on the #MD380? That corresponds to the "channel" in a "zone". But if you think of each "zone" as a memory bank instead, that just gives you quick access to one of 16 channels in a memory bank.

Those could be analog repeaters or #DMR talkgroups on a digital repeater/hotspot.

In the end, this means you get 4000 quickly accessible "memory slots".

Channels - This is what you'll use to program in repeaters. If they're analog, it's not that different than any other radio, just reference the CTCSS or PL tone.

If they're #DMR repeaters, you'll need to create an entry for each channel you want to use. Multiple channels can reference the same TG, so you only need to make one of those for each network you'll be using (Brandmeister, TGIF, etc).

Zones is where it gets weird on the #MD380 though. Kinda.

What appeared to be a very confusing radio mode actually turns out to be more of a bad case of "We don't know what to call stuff."

In case anyone else is searching around the #Fediverse for #DMR info on the #MD380, let me give you this handy translation guide.

Contacts - These are just DMR IDs that you give a name to and can correspond to either other users or talkgroups. You will likely mostly be using the latter.

Oooh, neat, the Kiwi emcomm org has an after-market manual for the #MD380

https://is.gd/27qvOr

Just to follow up with my other issue on the #MD380

So it turns out at some point I installed a driver for the radio called 'Guillemot' and that ended up not being the right one, and it kept showing up as an audio device. Uninstalling the driver wasn't good enough, had to delete the folder from Program Files and Program Files x86. After that, it deferred to the driver I found on Reddit (I'll track that down in a sec) and works fine.

#DMR #FreshHam

Ok, now the radio is reading/writing. On to the next step: going to YouTube and typing "DMR for beginners" and actually learning about it.

#FreshHam #DMR #MD380

Just reprogrammed a pair of DMR radios effortlessly thanks to a pre-built Linux binary:

https://www.farnsworth.org/dale/codeplug/editcp/

#hamradio #hamr #dmr #md380