Modern Ham Radio: 6 Reasons why LoRa Matters

 

Before COVID was a thing, the HVDN team worked on a project called HASviolet. The underlying wireless technology for this was LoRa. The timing was great for us to get into this spread spectrum technology as the costs for consumer hobbyists were coming down and the possibilities were endless or so we thought back in 2018 and into 2019.  

There are many, many videos by all the famous ham radio people on YouTube covering this also, so chances are you have heard of LoRa by now right?

This article is going to focus on six clear reasons why if you are involved in ham radio and our modern digital future, you need to get up to speed about LoRa now. And.... we are only hyperlinking once, so get ready to do some massive Google action for things mentioned below! 

Lessons learned from a presentation made at a few ham clubs a few years ago, we were early adopters in HVDN and now the rest of the world can catch up to us now that there is more to do and easier to buy.  

This article does not apply to people who think that HF and CW is the pinnacle of ham radio, so do NOT start making comparisons because LoRa has different goals, mostly deployed on the 70cm and 33cm bands.  Here we go...

Reason #1:  Its another mode with infinite settings - In LoRa language, there are some settings you can adjust that give you optimized communication.  As in "traditional" ham radio, in voice modes like AM, FM and SSB, you can change your bandwidth and audio to your liking. 

With Morse code, you can change how fast or slow you send with the aid of your radio features plus how to filter out adjacent signals.  With digital voice modes like DMR, you really do not adjust anything, just the destination details like color code, time slot and talk group. 

Other modes like D-Star, Fusion, NXDN, P25, there are other things you change relative to destination, but with these you can also send different non-voice payloads like location, texts and limited telemetry.  LoRa also does not compete directly with the likes of FT8, PSK31, RTTY, etc since it can do so much more. Closest competitor in terms of utility might be VARA, but its still not the same.

It is hard to RTFM if no manual exists. Welcome to LoRa and many other modern things which only include out of date limited print material. Its no longer 1979. Lets move on here.

With LoRa, you adjust the frequency and bandwidth plus specific settings for spread factor (SF) and coding rate.  The right blend of settings can provide short and fast transmissions for short range communication or longer and slower communications for greater range plus higher overall throughput or data speeds.  

There are many options in between which give you higher or lower data rates too.  This is important depending on what you are communicating and how often. LoRa does not support voice communications though, but can actually have up to eight distinct simultaneous channels for different needs and that is actually pretty cool.

There are preset options for frequency and the right settings to chose from are built in to many projects already.  The top non-academic level projects to look into are Meshtastic, HASviolet and LoRa APRS.

 All three are ready for use and support many different applications not found elsewhere in amateur radio today using advanced waveforms, low signal to noise ratios and options around spread spectrum technology at very low cost. Beware that interoperability is still being worked on given frequency and setting variances.

Reason #2: It is a cheap way into ham radio for people who do not speak - Sure, you can go and buy a cheap Baofeng or Quansheng radio for VHF/UHF voice communications or any other inexpensive radio that may do digital voice modes like DMR with or without some extra messaging capability.   You can also buy and build some type of 40m CW lower end kit for around the same price. 

Sure you can use a wire and connect the radio to your computer device and do limited data over audio channels. 

Price is not the goal here, but for under $50.00 you can buy a pair of either 433-510 MHz or 900-928 MHz LoRa radios plus maybe a case for both.   

While all the projects mentioned support either frequency range, there are benefits to both options.  

If you plan to coordinate with others, try to all buy the right spectrum radios.  It is worth noting that the M17 mode boards available for under $50 today can do both voice and data, but require a 9600bd capable radio and is still the same type of 12.5 kHz signal used by other digital voice modes. So we are still not talking about price.  For under $50 you can buy two LoRa radios on 70cm, install the right code for which over project catches your eye and that is all you need along with an antenna for greater range.

Reason #3:  It offers great community value  -  If you and your local friends can actually plan together, you can communicate in interesting ways with LoRa. 

Depending on the project you like best, its possible to bounce your signals from one another using mesh features or over a wider distance via a well placed digipeater. 

While most LoRa options are low transmit power, the range is pretty impressive and this allows both ham radio and unlicensed people to talk to each other with LoRa. As a ham, you can use higher power and create nodes that serve the whole community.  Be careful however when selecting frequencies so that you do not share unlicensed users over a digipeater created via LoRa in amateur radio.

Here is your chance to actually do something for the community because no one who is not a ham could care less about your morning "fiddle faddle good guy net". 

Your neighbors can check in with one another if the internet or cellular network goes down. 

This is your chance to do something without a 130ft wire antenna and the cult like aura of Morse code or even the local analog voice repeater where some "morning drive" discussions take on some form of papal like positioning.  

Once you get your community engaged with LoRa, then you can try and suck them in to the parts of the hobby you like better later on.  Again,  LoRa could be a great gateway into ham radio if thought about correctly.

Reason #4:  Gets you out of the house - We know you want to sit in your shack or pack your car full of gear to go to a park and bring way too much equipment to play "Parks On The Air".  With a LoRa device, you can look for other signals and be surprised who may be using LoRa, especially via Meshtastic if everyone is using the same frequency and settings.  

Clip a node to your dog collar or hide one on your wife's bag to track them, if you have a LoRa device with GPS. Give one to your kid or grandchild to stay in touch with you in an area with bad cellphone coverage.  It is easy to pair a LoRa device to your smartphone to create a modern text communicator.

There are many things you can do with LoRa and it also makes a great discussion point the next time you are doing POTA and no one cares about 20m contact park leader points.   If you are into SOTA, this may really get fun during summit to summit contacts especially since these are very small and light weight.  

You may even wish to visit your local library to have them print a 3D case for you if you do not own a 3D printer. So, anything with LoRa may get you doing something different somewhere different and possibly with different people for different reasons.

Reason #5: People who have 3D Printers will love it - If you have a 3D printer, now you can print cases for your local community which are customized how you like them for a LoRa based project. This also gives you reasons to find unique places or uses for a LoRa device to help justify why you bought your printer in the first place.

If you got into digital modes like DMR, D-Star, etc via a MMDVM based hotspot, think of LoRa as the next thing you need a 3D printed case for.

 

Reason #6:  Update the software to do really cool things - Best for last. If you use the Meshtastic software and want to try something else, just flash the new program to the ESP32 LoRa device you have or whatever other option you acquired.  

It is super easy to change things around and then even make you rethink your device case since you may now want to connect sensors to your LoRa device.  Have you ever wanted a mailbox alert to know when your small Amazon packages get shover in your postal box?  You can do that!  

There are so many options to explore and software is usually free, thanks to a community of opensource people. 

Heck, maybe if even gets you dabbling in some code without feeling overwhelmed since the projects mentioned here are well documented on Git.

Ok, now that I have your attention 

You are probably thinking, what to buy and where to buy it. Ham radio people often jump at the chance to spend a little money. And, by little I mean little.  That last under $50 HT you bought because you saw a video on YouTube or a local friend got one is a great example.  

How about those under $50 ham clock screens for your shack?  YES!  LoRa is now another thing competing for your under $50 spending.

Before you go and buy something, please do a little more research.  This is not for someone who struggles to find the power switch on a computer, how to use CHIRP software, or does not yet know that Raspberry Pi is not a snack.

The good news is there are people who did the hard work for you already to help guide what you buy, but beware, not all LoRa products are the same. Here are the tips for making your first LoRa related purchase.

Tip #1 -  Spectrum choice. It is likely better to purchase 70cm (420-450 MHz) capable equipment compared to the 33cm (900-928 MHz) type.  Be sure what you are buying is the correct frequency range. Some options on Amazon may be unclear so be 100% sure of this first before buying.

Tip #2 - LoRa is not always a finished product. While there are some really cool things on Etsy, Amazon and others sites you can find simply by searching for "LoRa".  Likely a case is the most important thing to put an unfished LoRa board in. Here is an example if you want to get started which includes a basic case, but not self contained in any other way.

Tip #3 - Power!  The Heltec v2 board linked in the above tip can run on a battery, but this means you need to buy a battery and a case to put your radio in. This means you will do some more research. A great example can be found on Etsy via a reputable seller who often gets sold out quickly since he prints on demand per order, but are top quality. If you have your own 3D printer, you can print the cases yourself though since the plans are in public.  Really consider power to your device early on to help you with future use cases.

Tip #4 - How do you use it?   The Heltec or TTGO options out there based around an ESP32 provide the ability to connect the LoRa board to a computer or smartphone over USB, WiFi or Bluetooth. If you plan to build some sort of "LoRa Base Station" for use at home connected to an amplifier and larger antenna, using USB is fine since it can power a board and provide communications at the same time without needing a battery.

Tip #5 - Oh, this is sort of like APRS for tracking things?  Yes, LoRa can be used for that. Not every LoRa board has GPS built in. Many boards can connect an external GPS to it if you wish to add that later. Many applications can still send location data without a GPS since you can either manually put coordinates in or use the GPS from your smartphone.  I would advise start with the two pack of LoRa mentioned above first and then perhaps buy a device like a TTGO T-Beam which is almost all self contained, including battery.

Tip #6 - Tell your friends!!  For this to work, we need more people using LoRa. There are groups focused on frequency standard like 433.775 as being a common one so far, but with different spread and coding rate.   If a few digipeaters can be put up somewhere using this inexpensive equipment, communications range is increased. Parts or Europe have been ahead of one North American country for a few years now, not surprisingly as example. 

Finishing Up

There are no links above in article which is different compared to many HVDN articles. We are trying to encourage you to go and search on your own. That is why!

Fall 2023: Global Digital Repeater Roundup (+ HVDN PSA)

 

If you build it, they will come is how the saying goes, right?  When it comes to digital voice modes today in amateur radio, the best way to chart the growth of the most popular modes is by looking at repeater deployments.

No individual, club or group of people will invest the time, money and annoyances to deploy a repeater on common amateur VHF and UHF spectrum unless they know there are people who will use it.   And, for people to use a repeater they need the appropriate radio which uses the appropriate mode or modes of communication. This means that people need to coordinate and that is not always easy.

Going into our 13th edition of the global amateur radio repeater round up over the last seven years, no one can argue where the direction of digital voice is headed, but where are the actual users today?

Please review any of the past linked articles for expanded commentary on mode specific drivers such as new radios or features related to different modes because this update will take a different direction.

As we can see in above chart, DMR continues to grow but there are so many splintered networks such as Brandmeister, TGIF and FreeDMR which make it frustratingly interesting for new joiners to figure out how to find people given that each network is separate and each uses its own talk groups/destinations unless they are content with using a hotspot.

A hotspot is under 100% control of the user compared to a repeater, so allowing your hotspot to go to different networks (on DMR) or other modes as well as any of the destinations (talk groups, bridges, reflectors, etc) is possible. Repeaters do not permit that, but that is not the intent anyway.

DMR Networks:  Lessons in diplomacy

While Brandmeister is still the most popular, not every DMR repeater will support talk groups the same way which forces some users to use a hotspot.   This make programming radios a challenge for some people as well as those that are experienced in keeping radio programming up to date as it relates to repeaters.

For new users who look for local repeaters that have DMR, the same talk group (Example:  31368) will not reach the same people if they are on a different network, unless someone created a bridge but that sort of defeats the purpose for different networks anyway. This frustrates people since DMR is not just DMR, its DMR that is implemented at the network level differently.

This network flexibility has proven to be a benefit and a curse at the same time for DMR, but that is ok because its still the most popular and lowest cost entry to digital voice. DMR has also proven to be the driver behind many innovations on network capability which the others did not focus on.

Any Pi-Star or the WPSD/W0CHP variant running on an inexpensive hotspot is just like having your own repeater though and you can set it up however you wish. 

It is estimated by HVDN that there is 70:1 ratio of hotspots sold compared to digital voice repeaters currently online.  At any given moment according to Brandmeister, there are well over 15,000 hotspots connected at any time. Currently, there are only a little over 11,000 digital voice repeaters, so that means that its possible there have been over 700,000 hot spots sold. 

There are many amateurs, including myself that have had multiple hotspots over the years and those I no longer used, were sold/given to others in the hobby.   Its easy to think that many interested in digital voice likely have or have had in excess of three or more hotspots so that 700,000 number is actually pretty modest and is probably too low.

Digital voice repeaters do not all need the internet

DMR also as a reminder does not need the internet and there are repeaters that provide only local coverage and users do not need to be registered via a central user database, even though it helps to have an ID linked to your callsign from https://www.radioid.net/ 

Yaesu Fusion and Icom's D-Star have a more tightly controlled network to connect repeaters to for those wishing to communicate via the aid of the internet, but also can be configured for local only coverage, but there are likely far less repeaters using these modes which operate that way. Registering on the Icom D-Star network can be annoying and Fusion while easier, still requires registration for internet access.

The commercial modes like P25 and NXDN can be deployed any way the repeater owner wants, but these will never reach the same scale as DMR or dedicated vendor modes because handheld or mobile equipment is not designed with the radio amateur in mind as its main buyer.

Here is the actual data for repeaters globally by mode and surveyed twice a year along with matching compound annual growth for period by period and total growth.

Eight Repeaters:  And growing.....

Now lets look at the M17 mode again which was designed by amateurs for amateurs, but there are no commercially made handheld or mobile radios available to support this just yet.  

Instead, for the time being its easy to purchase a few auxiliary devices which connect to 9600bd capable mobile radios to allow them to transmit and receive M17 protocol. 

There are also a few other devices such as transceiver capable SDR devices like a HackRF, Caribou or LimeSDR which can be used with software like SDRangel on a computer to communicate M17 mode.

Ready to purchase equipment will be available so anyone can use M17 for radio to radio communications, or radio to repeater to radio communications with or without the internet. Pictured above is the small batch run M17 board that only maybe a dozen people in the world currently have which converts any 9600md radio into a M17 radio.

Currently there are eight listed M17 repeaters on www.repeaterbook.com and this is three more since May 2023. 

North America as of the time of this article has a four M17 repeaters

And the remaining four elsewhere in the world can be seen below.

The current state of M17 is the "sweet spot" for HVDN given our focusing on emerging technologies that have evolved from ideation to "beta release"  easily accessible for those motivated to hands-on experiment and collaboratively discover versus appliance focused push button operators.

Over the last seven years as digital has become mainstream, those who consider themselves early adopters have moved on to other things.  It appears that M17 is the going to be the new playground for those looking for something new.

M17 is also not just voice communications since it also handles text. All the digital voice modes allow for this, but not many people use them.  It is this non-voice capability which HVDN will be spending more time focusing on in our build out.

Let's Just Wait:  Club Excuses

When HVDN was created in 2016, it was to partially provide intelligence to the local area here in New York who needed education about the most popular digital modes and assist those with becoming familiar with what turned out to be DMR as predicted. Now seven years later, not much has changed in the region. This has been a success, but only if you add up all the people who bought DMR radios and hotspots and not who use them every day, like an HF radio or 2m analog radio.

Eventually, just talking radio to hotspot to internet to hotspot to radio sort of gets boring. Am I wrong?  No.

The challenge is that still seven years later, the New York area and Hudson Valley specifically has not done anything innovative when it comes to embracing digital voice or infrastructure.  

The local ARRL  leadership excluding a few recent changes and leading clubs in our area continue and constantly fall back on "low effort" activities like HF contests, actual hamfests that do not get cancelled, recurring entry-level presentations, etc and ignore the fact that in order to attract and retain members, various leading edge activities and the infrastructure to connect them are needed

Amateur radio is different things to different people and many clubs complain about dwindling membership, lack of treasury or lack of engaged members.  None of them actually try to fix this known issue or make it hard for those willing to fix them. Events and new technology are needed to maintain and grow.

HVDN started off strong but only to be overwhelmed by some who just wanted the same thing, so now we will further distance ourselves from the general interest community's instead of being forced to embrace the failures by other clubs.

Tell me where the freaks at!

As 2023 now comes to a close, the seven year experiment ends and moves to the next phase.  HVDN will be focusing on building out its network in order to put the Hudson Valley on the map even more so and to attract like minded individuals to its membership ranks. 

Our first experiments with membership driven models did not allow us to target the right people, so those who were paid members have not been asked for dues in about three years to bring us back to zero and move to our new membership model. 

Between technologies such as M17 and LoRa, there will be some interesting things ahead for HVDN. Our suggestion is other area clubs better get ready or get left in the analog dust.

The member rates for HVDN will also be changing to raise the bar even higher and to act as a nice filter to retain and reward our contributing members in current standing. Let the rumble begin! 

Global Digital Repeater Round Up: Our 1st Post COVID Analysis?

Each May and October going back to 2016, HVDN has analyzed repeaterbook.com data for digital amateur radio repeater deployments. 

Today being the 1st of June and now officially in the "End of COVID" era according to United States Center for Disease Control, lets have a look at the latest data to kick off summer time in many parts of the world. Lets celebrate with some pie of all digital flavors!

Yaesu Fusion - Still the 2nd most popular (by volume) digital repeater with an impressive 9.97% growth over the reporting period.  New radios like the FTM-300 and FTM-500 by the single manufacturer of Fusion equipment help drive reasons for more fusion repeaters around the world, with a total of 6 current production radios on the market. The least expensive Fusion capable radio is the FT-70 handheld for around $180 USD. 

Icom D-Star - The good news is that Kenwood has the TH-D75 handheld radio ready to go to market later this year and will support D-Stat much like its earlier relative, the TH-D74. However, Icom is still the only main supplier of D-Star handheld, mobile or base radios.  While the new Icom ID-50 handheld will also support D-Star, there are eight current or near production radios that support this digital mode and none of them cost under $200 USD.  Icom D-Star has remained flat for repeater deployments at 1.79% growth but its worth noting like all digital modes, the internet or a repeater is not needed for digital mode communications. 

DMR - How do we explain 12.46% period growth for DMR?  More radios offered by more vendors and full tier 2 compliant handheld radios sold for as low as $30 USD such as the COTRE series of radios found on Amazon.  While you do not need a repeater to use DMR or even the internet, the multi vendor ecosystem certainly is working for the adoption of DMR as the leading (by volume) driver of digital amateur repeaters.

P25 - Still a commercial standard and no inexpensive new radio equipment available, but digital repeater deployments are growing at 15.67% over the reporting period which shows promise.  As commercial users retire phase one P25 equipment, expect to see more digital repeaters be put on the air globally. If the license for the P25 was as loosely enforced like DMR, we could expect to see P25 really grow fast over the next few years unless the new open standard M17 finally gets into production grade equipment.

NXDN - Another commercial standard generally deployed for non-critical users, there continues to be some decent growth by CAGR and not by volume of this digital mode offered by companies like Icom, Kenwood and others.  There are still no very low cost radios available using NXDN, so expect this mode to just be a novelty in use across some pockets of amateur radio enthusiasts. 

Get a slice of : What did you say about M17?

The good news is that repeaterbook.com now shows a total of five total digital repeaters using this open source mode. Currently there are the following:

• N1KGN - Located at Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut (United States)
• WX5RC - Located at Rogers State University in Claremore, Oklahoma (United States)
• KC1AWV - Located in NHL Bruin's territory in Rockingham, New Hampshire (United States)

Its worth noting that two of these three repeaters are listed as multi-mode  and are not M17 full time. The only one likely as a dedicated M17 repeater is Steve KC1AWV's since he is part of the official M17 development team.

There are two international repeaters with the secret one in Poland in Nowy Dwor Mazoweicki operated by the inventor of M17, the infamous Woj SP5WWP and the multimode capable VK3RCQ repeater located in Junortoun Australia.

By October,  HVDN hopes to see a few more M17 repeaters on the air, but there are still no off the shelf M17 capable radios available for purchase which will continue to hold things back for M17.  

However, there are some exciting things happening in the M17 community which will be more clear in the next few months to come.  So, for now keep an eye on M17 but it will take a long time for this one to reach mainstream which is ok given there are no "current" commercial companies making available equipment to use M17. 

Great, another DMR radio? But, with real 220 MHz?

Alinco was the first main stream amateur radio vendor to offer a DMR radio way back in 2016 with its  DJ-MD40 UHF only radio.  Less than two years later, they came to market with the dual band DJ-MD5TGP which included a GPS and was roughly based on the same reference design as the popular Anytone D878UV. Main stream being defined as Alinco often being included alongside Icom, Kenwood and Yaesu.

With many other radios such as the TYT MD-UV380, Radioddity GD-77, Baofeng DM-1801 and Ailunce HD1 offering dual band spectrum coverage at various price and feature differences, it looks like Alinco is about to offer its second generation version of its 2018 released "MD5" radio for short and it will offer a few things not found elsewhere, including a third band for some markets! 

This now further cements that Alinco is only going to focus on DMR for the amateur market, Kenwood and Icom on D-Star and Yaesu on Fusion for the time being until hopefully the HVDN backed M17 project and its TR-9 open source radio finds a manufacturing partner in China or maybe with one of the main stream vendors to stop fragmentation with so many competing digital modes.

How many MD5 are there?

There has always been some confusion while looking at discussion boards on Facebook as to how many different MD5 radios are there and the answer has always been two.

The DJ-MD5TGP has been the more expensive version and included a GPS.  The slightly lower cost DJ-MD5T is identical, but does not have the GPS and typically sells for $20 less.  Both versions are covered under the FCC ID of PH3DJ-MD5. The earlier DJ-MD40 can be found under FCC ID PH3DJ-MD5. 

The new, but not yet FCC certified Alinco DJ-MD5XT is going to likely require its own FCC ID as early documentation shows that this will be the first true tri-band DMR radio which will cover the 2m, 70cm and 1.25m amateur radio bands, plus extended receive above and below the VHF and UHF bands as usual. 

Looking in the just released computer programming software available on the Remtronix website, it clearly shows an option under MHF for 220 to 225 MHz.

Hackers are already salivating....

When it was discovered that certain band combinations would allow reception and transmission above 480 MHz just like in the Anytone D878UV and BTECH 6X2, Alinco was quick to issue new firmware to prevent this, but was easily bypassed with a 3rd party software tool to enable 480 to 520 MHz coverage. 

These extra frequencies are sought after in countries like Australia where there are UHF CB channels and in the United States where first responders such as New York City Police and Fire user channels above 480 MHz. 

Without spending time attempting to get an Alinco MD-5TGP with or without the patched 1.13c or 1.10 firmware to work with the CPS 1.09a meant for the new Alinco DJ-MD5XT, it would likely appear that the new Alinco DJ-MDXT due to having a band option meant for 1.25m should suggest there is different hardware inside that will offer safe operation of the 220 MHz band.

While many radios mentioned in this article can be "hacked" to give the impression they will work on the 1.25 band, it is not suggested to transmit as it will ruin the RF power amplifier and filtering in the radio since it is not designed for that spectrum.  Hopefully the Alinco DJ-MD5XT will support this great and underutilized band available only in the United States and few other countries globally. 

Related Reading

• FLASH NEWS!: Alinco MD-5 Series Cleared by FCC (Published Sept 20th 2018)

• The Official "NOT" Review of the Alinco MD-5 Series (Published Oct 4th 2018)

• Review: Alinco DJ-MD5T Series DMR Radio (Published Nov 7th 2018)

• Teardown: Expanded Alinco DJ-MD5TGP Review (Published Nov 18th 2018)

• Frequency Expansion: Alinco DJ-MD5TGP (Published March 7th 2019)