May 2019 Global Digital Repeater Round Up

It is that time of year again, where Hudson Valley Digital Network analyzes the growth of digital voice amateur radio repeaters and provides some additional commentary behind what is helping to push towards the future of mode modulation.

Why May and October?

The month of May in most parts of the world means nicer weather and the start of the hamfest season in many countries. In the United States, many vendors typically announce new products just before, during or after the three day long Hamvention formerly of Dayton Ohio but now held nearby in much more "modern" facilities in nearby Xenia.

This event often impacts purchasing decisions of both end user devices (hand held radios, mobiles, hotspots) and wide area infrastructure such as repeaters or so called "mega-spots".  Taking a measurement just before this event helps not only provide normalized results, but give readers an opportunity to see a big spike in growth just after should they wish to look into this themselves!

The Anytone D878UV is a very popular DMR radio
due to its feature set, price, durability and accessories.

October is the next update before the onset of winter and holiday shopping season when vendors sometimes run promotional sales. Measurement at the start of the fourth fiscal quarter helps provide more normalized measurements to track how things are looking for the future of digital voice mode growth.

May 2019 Digital Repeater Growth

Basing HVDN's measurements on public repeaterbook.com data has multiple benefits.  This website is widely used by the amateur radio community and captures almost all repeaters globally. Most all heavily used repeaters will be listed here and the operators of these resources usually like to let others know they exist to highlight the technical expertise it takes to run a good repeater. These are the two major benefits and why we chose to base our analysis only on this websites data.

The data above tells a great story. DMR continues its upward trajectory mainly fueled by inexpensive hand held radios and hot spot devices which create the need for wide area repeaters.

Growth of DMR repeaters over the last 12 months was 18.6% which equals 34.4% of all total digital voice repeaters for the top 5 digital voice modes.

The single vendor supported FDMA based Yaesu Fusion mode grew a respectable 12.6% from May of 2018 to present.  With lowered cost hand held and mobile radios along with a few promotions that resulted in sold out or back ordered equipment early in 2019.

Some other reasons the mode also known as YSF or C4FM has been widely popular are its fuller range audio and easy programming requirements compared to most all other digital voice modes.

Icom's D-Star continues to struggle thanks to its limited and higher cost equipment. There was not a single new D-Star capable radio offered for sale in the last year that fit into the hand held of mobile category.

Aside from the Kenwood TH-D74 which is the only non-Icom radio to support D-Star the only new radio capable of D-Star is the $2,099 USD Icom IC-9700.

This high end base radio will appeal more towards those interested in satellite or weak signal communications in the 2m, 70, and 23cm bands. While the radio is capable of D-Star operation, this radio will likely not cause any uptick in repeater growth.  Of the three major digital voice modes, the 15 year old GFSK based D-Star only saw 2.9% growth.

Commercial To Amateur Impact

DMR started life as TDMA based MotoTRBO offered to commercial customers by Motorola before it was made an open ETSI standard. P25 and NXDN are two other commercial voice modes that have started to see adoption by the amateur radio community as commercial users generate surplus equipment as they adopt newer equipment.

While the numbers of deployed P25 and NXDN repeaters combined equals a microscopic 6% of digital voice repeaters globally, both modes showed promising repeater growth.  P25 repeaters increased 19.1% and NXDN grew 13.3% in the last year.

While these two modes still only account for 525 of 8305 repeaters globally, this is interesting because only commercial new or surplus equipment is available. An HVDN prediction is that these two modes will continue to erode potential D-Star growth as most amateurs seek to experiment with easily obtainable and low cost equipment that has a professional or multi use appeal.

The Kenwood NX-5300 is a analog FM, DMR, P25 and NXDN radio
 made for the commercial market but is starting to show up on E-Bay.

Further 2019 digital voice expectations

While this update focuses on repeater growth, it is getting harder to avoid talking about hotspot devices.   The cost of single or semi-duplex devices thanks to open hardware and software initiatives has continued to trend between $30 to $70 USD which offers an opportunity to those looking to experiment with digital voice while mobile or at home when a repeater is not reachable or even available.

Duplex hotspots are like miniature repeaters as Joe N1JTA referred to them as in his presentation given at the Trenton Computer Festival earlier this year.  Much more about learning how to run a wide area digital repeater can be learned from these devices, especially as it relates to DMR and its unique "two discussions, at the same time, on the same frequency" capability.

Costs for duplex hotspots have remained in the $60 to $150 USD range and will likely hold steady for the foreseeable future.

While the original OpenSpot device continues to be a favorite of digital mode enthusiasts, the next generation OpenSpot 2 fell way short of expectations based on its cost, poor Wi-Fi performance and lack of portable power option.

A well known Chinese ham known as Winters CN, BI7JTA has been an active contributor to the advancement of open hardware for a while now.  He has recently introduced a new product that is very exciting in that it solves all negative aspects of the OpenSpot 2 and at a lower cost.

As a finished product, its likely going to be popular as more people learn of it. Since it also is based around common footprint boards, it can be further enhanced by replacing its MMDVM boards with those of even higher quality by engineers like N5BOC and his popular products.

With Alinco and Anytone becoming two of the more popular vendors compared to TYT and Ailunce of last year, probably the most anticipated new digital voice equipment soon to enter the market is the Anytone D578 mobile.

This radio has many common features as the Alinco, Anytone and BTECH hand held radios but introduces something that will be a first for the amateur radio community.

A full control bluetooth remote microphone with display will help set this radio apart for those looking for "remote head" capable radios but with an easier to install approach.

Digital Voice:  Looking Forward

DMR looks well positioned to continue to dominate digital voice interests in amateur radio, but may be challenged by P25 or NXDN if vendors like Icom or Yaesu decide to leverage expertise in the commercial business lines and introduce them to the amateur radio community. Alinco who is the only large amateur radio vendor to offer DMR product to amateurs, but also has a range of commercial products that supports NXDN also.

Features such as location sharing, text messaging and infrastructure enabled intelligence continue to be explored

March 23rd: TCF19 Computer Festival

This event has a little something for everyone interested in modern technology and applications, not just related to amateur radio or even computers.

The featured keynote this year will be led by Tony Sager of the Center For Internet Security which is headquartered just outside Albany, New York.  Tony will talk about the importance of cyber-security and how it affects almost every aspect of our connected lives today.

Other featured presentations include:

• The State of Cyber Crime in New Jersey by NJ Department of Homeland Security Cyber Team!

• Maintaining the Integrity of Elections in a Digital World – Rebecca Mercuri

• Quantum Computing – Barry Burd 

• Amateur Radio Satellite Spectrum - Steve Bossert 

• WordPress Bootcamp – Lou Judice

• Cybercrime and Theremin Zen – Kip Rosser 

• MMDVM Hotspot Construction - Joe Apuzzo  

• Hands-on Arduino Workshop for Beginners – Katalin Frolio

• All Day Robotics Pavilion – Seung-yun Kim

What about amateur radio? 

HVDN's very own Joe Apuzzo N1JTA and Steve Bossert K2GOG will be among the 50+ presentations and workshops also taking place during this fantastic event.

In N1JTA's 30 minute presentation he will talk about how radio and computers has converged through the popularity of digital modes in Amateur radio and how it has grown exponentially over the last few years due to the affordability of VHF/UHF digital handheld radios and other equipment.

One of many MMDVM hot spot options, the N2BOC version 

is full duplex capable and the same size as a Raspberry Pi Zero. 

A large part of this growth can also be attributed to the impact of hot spot devices and the unique learning capability they create. A hot spot is a small access point type device that uses amateur radio spectrum and a decentralized network of servers to enable global or local  digital communication.

Joe will cover at a high level, what is needed to construct your own "micro repeater" or hot spot device and how it works, along with how to create secure connections and utilize a decentralized network maintained by a group of amateur radio operators around the world.

Brandmeister is unique in that it can route all types of digital voice traffic through its decentralized network of servers to end node devices such as hotspots and repeaters

Since the hot spot device is nothing more than a Raspberry Pi single board computer and a multi mode digital voice modem hat plus some open source software called Pi-Star it is relatively inexpensive but very complex to understand how it works.

Steve will be cover in varying detail more than 21,000 MHz of spectrum available to amateur radio operators looking to experiment with satellite communications today. While much of this spectrum is above 1.2 GHz, this still leaves over 60 MHz of varied spectrum that can be used by those holding the easiest to get Technician class amateur radio license and with minimal expense.

Your DMR radio can also be used for satellite communications
via analog FM mode you might have forgot exists.

Steve's discussion will cover the most common spectrum used today for amateur radio operators interested in satellite communications, additional spectrum users to be mindful of and a review of the most active satellites that can be used with less than $100 of invested equipment.  He will also give a "sneak peak" on this topic to attendees of the March 11th HVDN meeting in Rhinebeck, NY.

More about TCF19, the full agenda and when is Joe's presentation can be found at https://tcf-nj.org/

Interested in other interesting events? Check out the HVDN activity calendar

Review: N5BOC Duplex Hotspot Board

Quality of construction has proved important across all newer digital voice capable radios and related infrastructure.

Modes such as DMR, NXDN and P25 all require stable clock sources to ensure proper operation with DMR especially requiring this because of its capability to allow two simultaneous data or voice streams on the same frequency at the same time. 

As the old adage goes, "You get what you pay for" holds especially true for the most modern of amateur radio equipment.

David Dennis N5BOC has created a high quality small duplex MMDVM board for use
with the Raspberry Pi Zero or any of the larger Raspberry Pi too 

This review provides some observations on the N5BOC designed duplex multi-mode digital voice modem (MMDVM) that packs a lot of capability into a very small form factor.

The key benefits of buying the N5BOC duplex board compared to the foreign manufactured ones are as follows:

• Gold plated contacts for superior on-board connections

• Thicker PCB material for improved DC and RF stability

• Additional u.FL connectors for external "pigtail" connections

• ECS branded TCXO for very stable frequency operation (No offset likely required)

• 1/2 the size of foreign made duplex board

• Lower power consumption compared to foreign made duplex board

• Help support domestic US amateur radio community design talent

Further details about why David Dennis designed this product, his design goals and user manual can be found HERE.

This MMDVM duplex board is handmade in small quantity to ensure quality. They sell out quickly, so be
sure to get on the waiting list and purchase it as soon as they become available.

After creating a fresh Pi-Star image and setting up both time slots with active talk groups such as 91,310, 3100, etc and running it this way for an entire weekend on a 16000mAh power bank, here is what was learned.

Feedback #1: Running the N5BOC board on a Raspberry Pi Zero lasted 11 hours longer compared to using the foreign pictured duplex board with identical rechargeable power sources down to 50% battery capacity.

Comparing the N5BOC duplex board to foreign duplex board

Feedback #2:  No offset was required on the N5BOC board compared to the pictured foreign board.  Better design and material likely attributed to this. 

Feedback #3: The N5BOC board is well thought out and designed compared to the single sided and less complex foreign board options

Critical Comments:  It is hard to find something to complain about with this product because all the underlying concepts are not new to me, but I would like to see:

What? User install-able SMA connectors for different mounting options and use of u.FL connectors instead which are great to see included.

Why?  Some people may not have good de-soldering skills and may want to use "pigtails" instead.

What? J3 connector placement for an OLED display if installed will block the on-board status LEDs 

Why? No big deal, but some may get annoyed by that. Good reason to consider other display mounting options or even a "wireless" display or just block out the LED by adding a display over the top anyway which can be turned off in software more easily then LEDs.

Connector pin out description for N5BOC duplex board

Final Comments: For the current price of just under $100, this is a very good piece of engineering. My current fully enclosed duplex board looks like an ancient prototype compared the smaller N5BOC board and am looking forward to an official case or creating something of my own.

Will the N5BOC duplex board look as cute when it gets an enclosure?