Pro Tip: Finding DMR Activity

As more and more users of digital voice amateur radio shift towards hot spot devices instead of local repeaters, it gets hard to find where people in your area are using DMR.

Since hotspots have such limited range, you would not likely be able to hear them "over the air" and there is not really any way to simply "scan the band" looking for activity like one may do on 2m or 80m.  So, how do you find DMR activity?

DMR: Get Predictive

Is this suggestion cheating? Not really.  There is a way you can use one of the many somewhat hidden analytic tools to find out what talk groups are most active and when.  This will help you learn when and where to spend time "lurking" since there are 1,439 officially set aside talk groups according to this nice Pi-Star DMR BrandMeister Talk Group page.

Using talk group 31630 (STEM) as an example, the chart below is predictive in the sense that every Tuesday evening at 20:00 hours Eastern US time, is a big spike of activity for a little over an hour. This is when the Northstar Digital Net takes place.

Another example on when you may find activity if you are traveling in the state of Louisiana is shown below by looking at talk group 3122.

How about if you want to feel really special and have "Nationwide US" all to your self with fewer people constantly asking for a radio check or signal report?   06:00 AM Eastern US may just be the time for you to sit on talk group 3100.

Where do you get these charts?

Here is where to go and find some possibly interesting talk groups and times to see what sort of activity is taking place.  https://brandmeister.network/?page=callstats

And now you know how to find the best of the best on DMR. 

Alinco DJ-MD5TGP: Upgrade Vocoder Process

It has been widely confirmed that the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP,  BTECH 6X2 and Anytone AT-D878 are essentially the same reference design and only have a few differences in hardware or software.

As discovered by Jason Reilly and his excellent page regarding the Anytone 868 and 878, it is possible for the user to change the vocoder.  This is done via software and is detailed here.

Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Baseband

HVDN was the first to point out that it was possible to expand the frequency range of the Alinco MD-MD5TGP.  The procedure for that was not far different than that of the Anytone, so upgrading the vocoder followed the same procedure with just a few differences.  Proceed at your own risk in doing this upgrade.

In our "Teardown: Expanded Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Review" article in November 2018, we pointed out the SICOMM SCT3258 chip and this is where the magic vocoder resides.

Go ahead and download this file from Jason's Tiny Upload link for the Anytone 878.  You can follow his instructions closely, but for the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP you will need to:

• Hold down # and PTT while turning the radio on to enter boot mode for SCT

• In the SICOMM software, you need to set the speed to 115200, not 9600 baud.

The Alinco DJ-MD5TGP used for this test already had version V2.01.05NJ. It was simple to upgrade to V2.01.07BA.  The receive audio seems to be even more pleasant now on DMR and preliminary audio reports seem positive, but more testing needs to be done.

Thank you Jason for all your great documentation!

More about the Alinco MD-5TGP via HVDN:

• Teardown: Expanded Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Review

• Review: Alinco DJ-MD5T Series DMR Radio

• FLASH NEWS!: Alinco MD-5 Series Cleared by FCC

• The Official "NOT" Review of the Alinco MD-5 Series

• Frequency Expansion: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP

• October 2018 Global Digital Repeater Round Up

GD77: The first HT based Pi-Star hot spot

As mentioned here in the past, Roger Clarke is the wizard down under. He is known for his Git repository making the firmware upgrade procedure on MMDVM boards pretty painless and also his work surrounding an open source CPS for the GD-77 DMR radio.

For much of the summer, he has been working with Kai on turning the Radioddity GD-77 into a hot spot which is probably the most exciting thing I have come across recently.  This is such an amazing case of open source software at work and making closed hardware, much more open.

Head on over for a read on Roger's blog for much greater detail and get ready for some fun. My biggest questions are:

• Will this work with the Baofeng DM-1801 and other ODM variant radios?

• How will this impact the "hotspot" market and prices?

• Will other radios see similar innovation (Alinco MD-5TGP, Anytone 878, etc)

Continued Reading:

• GD-77 Hot Spot Mode

• GD-77 Community CPS

• GD-77 Frequency Expansion

• GD-77 Introduction to new CPS

• Improving the TCXO for Duplex Hotspots

Frequency Expansion: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP

The Alinco DJ-MD5TGP can now easily be expanded to receive up to 520 MHz which is helpful to those that live in areas that use frequencies above 480 MHz such as New York City.

After upgrading the Alinco from FW 1.00 to the not 100% publicly available FW 1.04, I decided to try some key commands that did not work before while trying to reach the same frequency expansion results in the past.

Given that the Anytone AT-D868UV, AT-D878UV and BTECH 6X2 all share certain design elements as the Alinco this not all all too surprising with the latest firmware update rolled out to the Alinco DMR dual band radio.

How To Expand

Step 1: Hold down the 1 key, PTT and the side button directly underneath PTT while turning the radio on will show "DJ-MD5 TEST MODE" quickly followed by the Alinco splash screen.

Step 2: Rotate the multi-selector knob on the top of your radio to the desired operational mode and then turn off the radio.

Step 3: Your radio now will function as the mode you selected.

Using with CPS

If you read the data from your radio using the "Model" function, it should show which of the 14 options available through the test mode with the latest CPS v1.03.

Its now safe to start writing a new code plug or importing channel data again back into your radio.

Please note that you will need to inhibit or enable the transmit function on a per channel basis per your legal requirements.

Enjoy your new "receive" capability if you were looking to access frequencies above 480 MHz with a much smaller DMR capable radio compared to the Anytone or BTECH models.

Looking for interesting discussion about getting the most from digital voice communications?  

Check out www.northstardigitalnet.us for details

How To Guide: Satellite Based APRS iGate

There is so much amazing activity these days surrounding satellite and software defined radio (SDR), but there are not many clear and current guides for those interested in creating receive only gateways to send satellite born APRS signals over the internet. Let's change that.

APRS & Satellites (and balloons, drones, etc)

Currently there are three active satellite based digipeaters in low earth orbit. The International Space Station (ISS), PCsat NO-44, and SAT NO-84 all operate on 145.825 MHz.

There is also a fourth APRS satellite named FalconSat-3 that was turned over from the United States Air Force in 2017 for amateur radio use, but is operated on 145.840 MHz and requires a little more work to use. There are other amateur digital mode satellites in the planning stages.

Image Courtesy of  http://aprs.org/outnet.html

What is an iGateway?

An iGateway is nothing more than a radio receiver that is connected to the internet. Signals received by the antenna are passed from the radio over the internet.  The iGateway is designed for digital or data signals and not voice however. Websites such as findu.com and aprs.fi are two examples are where the benefit of igateways can be shown and show APRS data.

There is also the Othernet (Formerly known as Outernet) project that sends information from its ground station back up towards different satellites that "datacast" to special receivers such as the Dreamcatcher. Properly addressed APRS messages are in turn broadcast over this separate satellite network. This is not the same as an iGateway, but does add some other unique potential.  For an amateur to route a message with APRS through one of the mentioned satellites earlier, one must use the path of "OUTNET" instead of "ARISS".

General users of APRS for ground based modes typically leave the path as WIDE1-1 or WIDE2-1, but those interested in satellite communications must use the alternatives listed since a satellite works differently from a propagation perspective to ground based or even low altitude aircraft or balloons.

How To:  SDR & Raspberry Pi iGateway

To create an iGateway you will require:

• An inexpensive USB SDR

• Raspberry Pi Computer or other similar device

• Antenna capable of overhead reception

• Various cables and stuff for your installation

There are way too many variables on antennas and cabling specific to every installation so we will keep this brief and skip that part. The shortest run of coaxial cable from antenna to radio is needed. The highest and clearest view towards the horizon in as many directions as possible is required for optimal reception when considering setting up a iGateway.

The satellites we will be monitoring pass over most locations about 3-5 times every day for just a few moments, so it's possible a APRS capable satellite will pass over once every 60-90 minutes.

Lets setup the software bits and bobs....

The main goal of this article is to only share the steps for configuring software to get a SDR dongle working with a Raspberry Pi.  These steps can also work for those looking for alternate uses for SDR based hardware such as the now out of date L-band focused Dreamcatcher v 2.03 boards that were replaced with the newer Ku-band Dreamcatcher v3 and likely could be used too.

The real magic here is the software and how it will all work together.

First step, is get a working operating system on your device of choice such as the Raspberry Pi or Dreamcatcher v2.03. Most of these instructions will work for other linux based computers but is not the focus of this article.

Please run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade first to ensure your operating system is current and has most all of the popular packages installed for general use before continuing.

Second step, involves setup of Dire Wolf which translates sound to packet decoding. Run the following on your device to install it.

sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev
git clone https://github.com/wb2osz/direwolf
cd direwolf
make
sudo make install
make install-conf

Next, you need to configure the operating system to take virtual audio from an inexpensive SDR dongle and pass it to direwolf.  Go ahead and plug in your SDR dongle to your raspberry pi. If you are using a Dreamcatcher, there is no need since the SDR is part of the board already!

sudo apt-get install cmake build-essential libusb-1.0-0-dev
cd
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr-git
cd rtl-sdr
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../ -DINSTALL-UDEV_RULES=ON -DDETACH+KERNAL_DRIVER=ON
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig
sudo reboot

Let's pause for a moment and test the SDR to make sure its recognized.

run "rtl_test"  and ensure you get a status update like this before continuing. This shows that the SDR is being recognized by your Raspberry Pi, Dreamcatcher 2.03 or other single board linux computer.

Now we need to configure Dire Wolf and the best way to do that is copy some of the great work that Keith G6NHU has compiled. Head on over to his interesting site here:

http://qso365.co.uk/2017/02/a-guide-to-setting-up-an-aprs-receive-only-igate-using-a-raspberry-pi-and-an-rtl-sdr-dongle/ 

The only basic change you need to make is to select the correct frequency. In the United States much of the APRS activity is on 144.390 MHz, but since we are interested in satellite based APRS, change it to 145.825 MHz instead.

What did you say about balloons?

Perhaps you may tire of the same general activity on APRS terrestrial activity or even what may be bouncing off a satellite.  The next logical thing to look into would be tracking a balloon of some sort.

Taner DB1NTO has a new product out to cater to people looking to track something that can only carry a very light weight device.  He calls it PicoAPRS Lite and should open up lots of possibilities to experiment with alongside perhaps with a portable version of an iGateway connected via cellular hotspot.

If anyone in the Hudson Valley is interested in experimenting with tracking objects other than a house which does not move much, or a car, lets start talking.

The STEM (31630) DMR talk group seems a logical spot as well as the AMSAT (98006) talk group, so lets make something happen here when spring time arrives!

• More about STEM 

• More about AMSAT

Visit the HVDN Activity Calendar to learn of upcoming discussion, projects, meetings and events 

March 30th: DMR University

The Hudson Valley of New York has recently become a hot bed for modern physical and digital destinations of interest to the amateur radio community.

DMR has permanently changed the way amateur radio operators approach local communication through repeaters, hotspots and direct communications.

As the highest growth digital voice technology today, please join Lenny N2LEN along with other local "DMR Experts" on Saturday March 30th at Greene County Emergency Services located
at 25 Volunteer Drive, Cairo NY 12413.

DMR University will be taking place in the main conference room downstairs.

The agenda is as follows:

9:00 AM - Morning Session

• Introductions and brief history of DMR
• Overview of current Digital Voice Modes
• How DMR is Unique: C-bridge, Brandmeister, TGIF networks
• Hotspots/MMDVM: Shark RF Openspot2, Zumspot, Jumbospot, etc...
• Overview of Current DMR Radios
• Anatomy of a DMR Repeater
• Introduction to Talkgroups
• Understanding Zones, Contact Lists, & RX Groups
• Scan Lists
• DMR Etiquette: How to act on the DMR network

12:00 PM - Lunch Break

• Bring your own food or visit a nearby restaurant

           

Afternoon Session

• How to Build a Codeplug
• Hand's On Programming Exercises

Len kindly asks that those interested in attending to reserve a seat in advance and to bring a laptop for programming, your radio, any programming cable you may have, and have a copy of the Programming Software you use installed on the laptop. 

However, do not worry if you do not have a DMR radio or laptop, there will be some radios for you to experiment with. 

Important: To reserve a seat, please email Len at n2len@aol.com

If you haven't already done so, please go to Register here for your DMR ID# and obtain a DMR ID number. (https://www.radioid.net/register#!)

Survey Results: U.S. 2018 70cm Band Spectrum

A poll concerning the use of 420 to 450 MHz spectrum in the United States was posted on the popular QRZ.com website on August 29th 2018.  Participation was open through end of 2018.

There were actually a total of 83 votes, but 6 respondents indicated they do not use 70cm or only listen from time to time. This would have represented 7.22% of the total results. All details below do not include those 6 responses since they do not actively use 70cm spectrum in the United States.

Maybe 2019 will be different for those and others not currently using 70cm for many different activities.  Here are the results of the 2018 survey.

Methodology & Goals

The reason to run a survey was to quantify the current and major use cases of the 420-450 MHz amateur spectrum in the United States. There is currently a huge disruption taking place thanks to digital voice communications through modes such as DMR, Fusion, D-Star and others and a survey helps to add fact to this statement.

The survey included 10 questions focused on use cases or common applications of the spectrum in question. These questions were than able to be aggregated into 5 general categories of:

• Analog FM Voice - Repeater based communication, Point to Point Simplex and short range hot spot use for things like Echolink were the three questions asked. The survey indicated 44.17% of active 70cm users use analog FM communication methods.

• Wide Band Modes - There was only one question asked in the 2018 survey about wide band modes and focused on amateur television or ATV. This type of activity requires channels four or more times wider than the widest audio only modes.  Only 2.41% of the survey respondents use wide band modes in 70cm spectrum based on the 2018 survey.

• Digital Voice Modes - Repeater, simplex and hot spot use cases were the three digital voice mode use questions within 70cm spectrum. For relatively new technology, an impressive 23.38% of survey takers reported to use digital voice as a primary activity on 70cm in the United States.

• Weak Signal Modes - Two weak signal questions were asked that covered single side band voice (SSB) and all other terrestrial or natural objects often associated with weak signal work such as beacons, EME bounce, Morse code and other things such as FT8, PSK31 and WSPR.  11.69% or survey takers enjoy the challenges of weak signal mode operation on 70cm with 7 of 9 category votes captured by SSB, likely during UHF contest periods.

• Satellite Modes - Only one question was asked since most all satellite operation takes place in a protected portion of the 70cm spectrum from 435 to 438 MHz. Uplink and downlink use of any mode used to make contact through man made objects like a space station or satellite were easy to ask in one question in the 2018 survey. With 18.18% of the survey results coming from satellite based use cases, it is clear that amateurs who use 70cm for this reason are active and create a strong reason to have dedicated spectrum for this sort of application. Most any mode is permitted and 2019 will start to see a rise in digital voice satellite use thanks to the recently launched and operational D-Star ONE.

Additional Survey Insights

The below table lists out all questions 9 of 10 questions and the category they contributed towards.

Some Additional Thoughts

Considering at of the end of 2018 there are 755,416 licensed radio amateurs in the US according to official FCC records, this survey sample size is microscopic. However, the total number of active annual radio operators is probably closer to 20% (1 in 5) This would equal 151,083 of  active amateurs in the last year somewhere across all amateur spectrum and not just on 70cm.

The QRZ.com website is pretty popular and seemed to be the best place to field a survey since its fairly agnostic and does not favor those for or against the direction of the ARRL which may have clouded the survey results, but likely would have increased the total number of respondents.

QRZ.com may attract more forward thinking amateur radio operators who are open to learning about new and advanced things to do within this hobby where they can be openly discussed. Many members of the ARRL are on QRZ.com, but only the ARRL can report on things from its membership which is only 170,000 as of 2016 or 22.5% of all amateurs in the US.

While ARRL membership totals are pretty close to the number of estimated active amateur radio operators, the ARRL also includes some non-US members, clubs and supporters so may not accurately represent those most active in the amateur community.  Its total membership may only represent a smaller number of active amateur radio operators than it may care to admit but may be changing due to new leadership in 2019.

If we were to consider that possibly 3 of every 10 active licensed hams (151,083) also frequent QRZ.com, the total pool of likely respondents would have been about 45,325 and potentially 1 of every 7 QRZ.com visitors who may have even found the survey area and logged in to take it would mean roughly a total pool of 6,346.

Ergo, 83 responses from a pool of 6,346 is 1.3% which is right on the border for statistically significant survey results considering that a professional firm touts results over 2% as very successful.  A 2019 survey hopefully will do much better.

If a 2019 survey for 70cm use cases can be organized by the ARRL and other organizations on neutral grounds, it would likely be more accurate based on total responses and prove beneficial towards leadership in emerging aspects of the hobby to create better experiences for all amateur radio operators in the United States looking at digital voice operation, best practices and equipment purchasing decisions.

Questions?  Comments?

If you wish to contact the team responsible for this article, please send a detailed email to 4info@hvdn.org  but remove the "4" or your message will not go through.

Reminder:  Upcoming Kit Build Event. Learn More Here.

Review Update: New PicoAPRS Model(s) & Firmware Update

Lately it seems the only attention APRS has been getting is if and how it is implemented on new DMR radios.

This is not fair, so let us look at some dedicated APRS only devices compared to some radios that offer location and message sharing capability.

PicoAPRS product is the smallest
APRS transceiver on the market

Location Finding: Different devices for different people

Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) is a technology 20+ years in the making that lets amateur radio operators use low speed data over narrow channels to share location and basic text status updates in a few formats.

Cool Thing:  It is also possible to use APRS for telemetry data, such as weather information or malfunctioning equipment status updates. APRS can also be used to track things, like a rocket or a balloon. This is the Amateur Radio version of "Internet of Things" before that was even a term.

Ham equipment vendors Yaesu (Fusion), Kenwood and Icom (D-Star) all offer different digital voice mode radios and none are DMR products which is the most popular digital voice mode today.

Pictured Left to Right - Kenwood TH-D74, Xiaomi Mijia,
TYT MD-UV380, Alinco MD-5TGP, Mobilinkd TNC2, PicoAPRS

Vendors such as Anytone, TYT, Retevis and Alinco support the ability to send GPS data that can appear on the APRS.fi website, but this is not really APRS in the traditional sense, but some call it D-APRS.

Hot Stuff: A good comparison of APRS to another form of location sharing was done from a hot air balloon this summer.

Location Battleground:  Get ready!!

Beyond amateur radio which is a licensed radio service globally, there are now unlicensed radios such as the GoTenna, Xiaomi Mijia and Motorola T800 that allows users to share location data with one another, but are far from as robust as what is possible via amateur radio at any level thanks to APRS but come close and are slightly easier to use as discovered a recent hamfest.

Non-Voice Capable APRS Devices

Two of the smallest and full featured APRS devices that are not voice transmission capable are the PicoAPRS v2 and MobileLinkd TNC2 which have been reviewed in the past on HVDN Review Lens.

The Mobilinkd device is more of an accessory gadget that physically plugs into most any two way radio with appropriate cable.

THe Mobilink TNC2 also requires a smartphone paired over bluetooth that runs an application to send, receive and view location of users or send messages based on the GPS built in to the smartphone. This is sort of messy but is an elegant solution....

APRSdroid application found on Google Play store

The PicoAPRS however is a totally self contained device that is a GPS, data radio and user interface in one even smaller package.

Taner, DB1NTO has made many improvements in his PicoAPRS product since its introduction and that is what we will explore. No smartphone needed or other radio needed!


What is the difference between the PicoAPRS v2 and v3?

For something already really small, Taner made it even smaller in the latest version while retaining every feature and even adding a few things such as a modular battery and even better precision GPS/GLONASS reception.

Can I connect the PicoAPRS to a computer?

Everything can be configured with the two buttons on the PicoAPRS.

If you want to customize a beacon comment, such as "Please call me on 146.520MHz or DMR TG 31630", that takes many button presses.

It is possible to do this instead via a terminal program such as TeraTerm. The otherwise very good PicoAPRS manual is somewhat lite on detail about this, so here are some simple steps for those that are not computer experts.

--------

Connect PicoAPRS to computer:  On the PicoAPRS, navigate to the menu called  "USB Mode" and change it to "Config". Then connect the PicoAPRS to your PC and it should install USB drivers automatically in many cases. If not, this is what you need from Silicon Labs.  

Configure a few things on your computer:  In "Control Panel" and "Device Manager" in Microsoft Windows, you can now see which COM port your PicoAPRS will use.

Now you need to configure TeraTerm by selecting the serial port connection that matches your PicoAPRS.

Next, open up the menu titled "Setup" and go to "Terminal" and configure to be CR+LF and check mark the "Echo" box.  This lets you see what commands you send to the PicoAPRS.

Finally, open up "Setup" again and go to "Serial Port..."  You need to select the same COM port your PicoAPRS is using and set the speed to 115200.  No other setting will work.  It needs to be 115200!!

Now, you are ready.  Press any key or the ? and you should get the below message returned to you which shows what you can configure from the computer with your PicoAPRS

To change the beacon message, just type *C* with your own text after it and press enter

Sidenote on other computer things:  On the PicoAPRS, you can also change the USB settings to give you GPS NMEA data. Go ahead and try it while still connected to TeraTerm. Changing to that mode will let you see something like this:

There are also many other applications that will let you use the KISS-TNC mode for even more advanced things. Some of these include PinPoint APRS and WinLink plus of course the old standby of APRSISCE32 but is not part of this review.

There is also a new "Serial USB" data mode too which has a lot of interesting potential if you want a total stealth data radio to go with you anywhere with your laptop.

Get to the point!!!  All I am trying to say is that the PicoAPRS does a lot more than look like a cute little ham radio toy.

New Feature In PicoAPRS Firmware v10 

While v9 software is the most current as of December 3rd 2018, v10 is not far away and will add a status message function in addition to beacon messaging.  This gives you two different types of status updates sent at different intervals from the PicoAPRS.

The new firmware will be available around Christmas time 2018 along with a new and even smaller product from Tanner called PicoAPRS Lite which is designed for use with airborne payloads.

Please keep an eye on his website for more detail at http://www.db1nto.de/ for the new firmware, details on the v3 and the upcoming new PicoAPRS Lite product.

Teardown: Expanded Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Review

In a short amount of time, the new Alinco DJ-MD5TGP has become an easy favorite by the author. 

After doing a fairly basic review that highlighted the programming software as one great feature compared to other DMR radios, I thought it would be good to continue onward with an internal review much like the two part teardown for the TYT UV-380 a few months ago.

Do your own review? If you would like to download Alinco CPS 1.1 for the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP, you can do that here since it is not yet available on the Alinco website. 

The Alinco DJ-MD5TGP is priced to sell and is feature
packed and few of early launch quirks like many other
competing DMR hand held amateur spectrum capable radios

Some Additional Review Thoughts - External Feelings

Before we dive in with some internal photos and details, here are some additional thoughts on why this radio is earning high marks in my opinion. 

The Good: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Display -  At 1.7 inches every bit of information on the color display is well thought out and organized. The closest competitor to the Alinco is the Anytone D868UV and newer D878UV.  

Many features made famous by the various aftermarket firmware such as MD380tools and its variants for TYT or Retevis radios certainly provided inspiration for Alinco.

The only non-DMR radio that would even compete is the $500 Kenwood TH-D74, so for between $170-$190 for the Alinco - you get a lot of thoughtfulness in display layout design.

Alinco DJ-MD5TGP on default level of brightness
showing a typical level of DMR information

The Good: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Side Buttons - Besides the PTT button on the left side of the radio, there are two others.  

Both buttons can be reassigned for too many combinations including a separate function based on a long press or short press, so technically its like having four buttons just like many larger radios. It is also possible to lock out both side buttons which is potentially a nice feature.

The Good: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Connectors - At first, a thought on the change to the SMA-J reverse polarity antenna connector was going to be annoying and force me to rethink all future antenna or connector purchases. 

.... ...- -.. -. .- ..- -... ....

Author Perspective: I think I now understand this is a beneficial connector and not a cheap option that has been found on all the inexpensive "Baofeng" type of radios plus few others that are more premium like the Ailunce HD1 and Anytone D868/D878.  The common SMA Female as it is known on radios like the Icom ID51, Yaesu FT2DR, Kenwood TH-D74 may be the last of that generation to make way for more SMA-J style connectors on hand held radios.

.... ...- -.. -. .- ..- -... .... 

This antenna connector seems like it will prevent potential stress fractures that happened with the MD-2017 connector and anyone who has ever "accidently" dropped a radio.  

While the antenna connector is the same as other non-Yaesu, Kenwood or Icom radios, I welcome the change back to what I think of as standard mic/ear connections. 

Important: The larger 3.5mm plug is for speaker and the 2.5mm is for microphone. 

The benefit with this is having easy ability for most standard headphones to plug in to listen to music via the FM broadcast function or to any other frequency the radio is capable of receiving.  This was standard until opposite became standard, so now we are going back to the old ways. Make sense?  Have a look at Radio Shack HTX-202, Icom W32, Alinco DJ-496 plus other radios of that vintage to better understand.

Alinco DJ-MD5TGP outer casing removed to show GPS
antenna placement, waterproof covering for volume
and channel knob and SMA-J antenna connector

A Baofeng, Kenwood or Retevis microphone will
not work with the Alinco and that may be a good thing

The most exciting option on this radio is the micro USB connector found on pretty much every smartphone aside from the latest USB-C based options like the Google Pixel 3 or Samsung Galaxy S9. This makes future replacement super convenient and inexpensive. 

Standard USB cable for the Alinco, just like the Kenwood TH-D74.
Will all radios soon have common programming cables?

The Good: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Sound -  Audio for such a small radio is loud and not overdriven. As we will see in the tear down, the keypad is essentially in front of the speaker and microphone holes which saves on space to make this a compact and sturdy radio. 

The Good: Alinco DJ-MDTGP Super Features -  There are many cool functions found in this radio, but I am only going to mention two here that may relate to what we will also see in the teardown.  

One is the ability to monitor (listen) to both DMR time slots on the same frequency at the same time thanks to the "Digi Monitor"  function with "Double Slot" enabled. 

This can be off and single slot - which is like "promiscuous mode" or "Group Match Off" found on other radios. 

Pay Attention!! A function like this makes it possible to never, EVER miss any DMR communication on one frequency when "Color Code" is set to the "Any" function.    

This is great if traveling or wanting to casually monitor, but this feature may get annoying if there are two different discussions taking place at the same time on different time slots since the audio on both is at the same level. 

The second super feature is almost laughable, but allows you to customize the maximum receive volume level. Setting a low level gives greater range of control across the entire rotation of the volume knob. This feature helps solve some of this sort of issues with digital audio that is hard to have good automatic gain control (AGC) to solve.

Teardown Key Points

The following sequence of photos include comments as to the "internal" impact on what makes this radio unique. 

The only other radio that is considered the most popular DMR radio is the Anytone D868/D878 which is roughly the same size as the TYT 380 style radios or re-branded Retevis options.   There is already a decent teardown of the Anytone D868 here  and here which we will learn has some similarities to the new Alinco and possibly even more with the new Anytone D878, including the screen and layout.  

Do better features come in smaller packages? 

Behind the front cover PCB

Alinco has seemed to engineer this well and may not suffer this issue as found on older keypad designs.  All buttons are interspersed with the speaker grill opening. The speaker is behind the button overlay.   

Note the GPS antenna positioned at the top of the display which gives it excellent reception compared to the TYT MD-UV380 and MD-380G which uses the identical antenna, but poorly positioned.

Rear of behind front PCB

Two springs contact the speaker from the bottom main PCB and a multi pin connector completes further connection for the keypad and display. This is much better design than ribbon cables that have proved a fault point in main other radios or short soldered wires for the speakers which can be easily broken. 

Front of main PCB

The front side of the main PCB shows the springs and connector that mate to the front PCB.  The large RF shield covers the "front end" of the radio which helps create a receiver that suppresses any internally generated noise. 

A smaller RF shield towards the bottom of the front PCB protects other critically sensitive parts of the software defined radio (SDR) heritage of this radio but is not direct conversion based on the multiple TCXO and real time clock (RTC)

Main PCB of Alinco DJ-MD5TGP prior to removal
of RF shield covering the bulk of the RF front end 

Alinco DJ-MD5TGP main PCB with RF shield
section removed to show the L C filtering

Rear of main PCB

The underside of the main PCB of the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP shows some exciting things. First is the properly placed RFPA that contacts the large metal backing of the radio found under the main battery. 

The main CPU for the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP is the GD32F303 which is a cloned version of the ST Micro version called STM32F303. The differences are mostly negligible, but "on paper" specifications list some improvements with this version which also licenses ARM Cortex M3 architecture.

This microcontroller selection may contribute to how Alinco was able to offer the DJ-MD5TGP for the price of $169.99 to $189.99 USD in late 2018.

Also found on the underside of the main PCB are the AT1846S popular SDR chipset used in many DMR radios  Interestingly, the Texas Instruments  very low power stereo audio codec chipset with pretty decent DAC properties is also involved. 

These two chips alongside the main MCU (GD32F303) create some powerful capabilities in such a small package dual band radio.

AT1846S as found in the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP

Texas Instruments AIC3204 as found in the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP

Big Deal:  Dedicated DMR Baseband

We still have not found anything too interesting, but we have yet to talk about the SCT3258 which is a dedicated baseband chip for DMR with built in AMBE3000+ capability. 

This is where the magic likely happens for the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP and may enable interesting future upgrades based on cursory glance at the SiComm specification sheet. 

Finally, we arrive at the RDA 5802 FM receiver chip that offers some music reception capability in this unique radio.

What does all this mean anyway?

There is a lot of interesting engineering involved with the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP which is far different compared to radios like the TYT MD-UV380 and Ailunce HD1.

Many manufacturers today no longer include schematics to help in the repair and possible future modification or improvements that could be made at the hardware level.

Instead, the hardware tools are here and only an interest in further software modification can potentially unlock more functionality with modern radios.

Hopefully this teardown may inspire further curiosity in this Alinco radio to educate a buying decision or even the possible eagerness to intentionally void a warranty to poke and prod around the inner workings of this fascinating radio.

The final image to share is that of the ATGM336H GPS chipset.

Basic Bill of Materials 

Use this handwork to estimate the bill of materials for this radio based on these highlighted chips and determine if the Alinco DJ-MD5TGP is a good value or not.

I think you may find this latest radio by Alinco represents the best of a modern digital amateur radio as of November 2018 and it will be interesting to see what is the going to be the next big advancement in amateur radio hand held radio offerings.