My Pi-Star MMDVM Hotspot Setup

Recently, I purchased an Anytone D878UVII Plus DMR radio and with no BrandMeister Net connected repeaters in my area, I went looking for a hotspot option.

As I have a drawer of (apparently very valuable) old Raspberry Pis, I decided to go the MMDVM hat route, purchasing the AURSINC MMDVM kit from Amazon. I slapped it onto a Raspberry Pi Zero and got to work configuring Pi-Star to allow connections to the BrandMeister Network.

Pi-Star Configuration for BM Net

Pi-Star Configuration for TGIF

Some local clubs use the TGIF Network to chat, so I wanted to add that to my hotspot. Doing that with a Simplex hotspot like mine isn't so simple, but I was able to do it with some annoyances.

Firstly, I added the following configuration to the Configuration -> Expert -> DMR GW field.

[DMR Network 4]
Enabled=1
Name=TGIF_Network
PCRewrite1=1,4009990,1,9990,1
PCRewrite2=2,4009990,2,9990,1
TypeRewrite1=1,4009990,1,9990
TypeRewrite2=2,4009990,2,9990
TGRewrite1=1,4000001,1,1,999999
TGRewrite2=2,4000001,2,1,999999
SrcRewrite1=1,9990,1,4009990,1
SrcRewrite2=2,9990,2,4009990,1
SrcRewrite3=1,1,1,4000001,999999
SrcRewrite4=2,1,2,4000001,999999
Address=tgif.network
Password=<MY TGIF PASSWORD>
Port=62031
Location=0
Debug=0
Id=<MY RADIO ID>

Radio Settings for TGIF

On my radio, I added my hotspot's frequency and talk groups to channels, with 4XX padding the TGIF takl group IDs to 7 digits.

For example:

103 TGIF would be 4000103 in my radio, 33302 TGIF would be 4033302

Hardware Networking

Because I am using a Raspberry Pi Zero (not W), there is no ethernet or wifi built into the board. Because of this, I bought a cheap USB Micro OTG to Ethernet adapter, and use it either plugged directly into my network or into my travel router tethered to my phone on the go.