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

Watch! Two Time Slots & SDRangel In Action

DMR is confusing for some people. SDR is even more confusing for others.  What happens when you combine the two?  Mass hysteria?  Global epidemics? Accelerated excitement?

Due to a delay in circuit board re-design for the the Modern Field Strength Meter project, we bring you something different for this week (and possibly next)

This article builds on past written content and accompanying videos to show some of whats possible today when combining the two.

Some Brief Background First

DMR has seen a lot of growth because it is cheap to get started and talk around the world.  SDR adoption for many started with inexpensive USB dongle type of receivers before moving to something more capable. Many SDR dongle purchasers hoped to hear signals from around the world using these cheap receivers.

For a sum total to a new ham who may invest less than $300 in the amateur radio hobby, they can purchase a dual band DMR/FM hand held radio, multi-mode digital hotspot, USB SDR dongle and a few accessories such as antennas, power packs, etc. All this gear permits both local, global and emerging aspects of the hobby to collide and find people with like interests to talk with others about.

For comparison, when I got started in the hobby in the mid 1990's, the starting point for many was a VHF only Radioshack HTX-202 handheld radio for about the same $300! This permitted only local communication and while it still works today, there is a world beyond 2m.

“You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.”
Radio Shack is out of business by the way...

With DMR being the most popular digital voice mode that permits  local and global communication and an SDR being able to receive voice and non-voice communications locally and globally, there is a lot of capability at hand today for a new ham. Compared to local VHF activity, DMR provides the ability to talk with not the same local people all the time, but with the voice quality of local repeaters.

Many new hams experience getting on the air for the first time on the VHF 2m band and some quickly tire by talking to the same few people generally about the same thing. If there are not enough common interests with those locally, that new ham often decides the hobby is not for them.

Even so, many new hams who tire of 2m and move on to HF for long range discussion, get frustrated by higher expense, more planning for antennas and potential lack of people with common interests to talk to depending on when HF bands are stable or not.

The Best DMR Feature

DMR uses similar technology to second (2G) and third generation (3G) cellular communications known as TDMA.  The unique thing about TDMA based DMR is its ability to have two discussions on the same frequency at the same time with zero interference.  More about that here on HVDN.

Many have heard this, but not seen it in action.  Here is a brief video:

The laptop in the foreground is running SDRangel software that is receiving signal from a dual time-slot hotspot on a SDR nano3 USB dongle. The frequency for this test on my dual time slot hotspot is 432.565 MHz.

The SDR Nano v3 retails for less than $30 and is very small.
A standard SD card is shown at left for size comparison.

On the laptop in the video background is showing the call-sign, time slot and talk group (virtual frequency) as its received by the hot spot.

The audio is being output by the foreground laptop and you will see how it coincides with the information on the background laptop.

This test was conducted at a time when a lot of activity is present on popular DMR talk groups known as TAC310 and Worldwide 91.

The same SDR dongle can be used to receive signals from local amateur radio repeaters that are DMR, analog FM or even some less popular modes such as Yaesu Fusion, Icom D-Star and commercial focused NXDN and P25.

As evidence by the video,  both local US and international amateur radio operators are able to talk to one another without having to invest in large antennas or high powered radios such as those used on HF for voice communication.

What is fascinating about DMR is how many of the older ham radio operators have taken to DMR for casual discussion instead of just using HF.

You never know who you will hear on amateur radio and where they are from. Investing in modern technology will allow a new or experienced ham to try new things for little expense before deciding where else to invest in.  This "modern ham" starter package may cause reason for purchase for things such as:

• An HF radio
• Outside HF, VHF or UHF antennas
• A better computer 
• A higher end SDR
• Getting better educated about SDR and DMR
• More education on computer/ham convergence

If there is interest in anything mentioned in this article, look for many of the HVDN members on DMR TG 31368 which is geographically focused for those residing in the mid Hudson Valley of New York. 

You can also look for discussion of combined topics on the new STEM talk group 313630.  More detail about that and its focus here stem.hvdn.org