Since DMR Radios and DMR Hotspots have become common our club decided to investigate building a DMR Switch to provide our own independent talk groups for club activities.

We have built a switch based on the HBLink3 software which is running on a server in the cloud. This switch currently has four talk groups configured, these TG's are available for anybody who connects to the switch, but access may be limited to club members in the future.

It is recomended that you set up your DMR radio to use three talk groups through your Hot Spot. There is a calling talk group, a working talk group and an echo test talk group used to record and send back your audio for testing. Yopu can check who is currently connected to the switch and the logs using the monitor webpage https://www.wearc.org/monitor

If there is interest, this switch can be extended to include a gateway to DStar, link to local repeaters or connect to a future club RF repeater.

 

To connect to the WEARC Switch you will need to program your hot spot. Your Hot Spot will probably be programed to work with one of the Brandmeister servers. This is how you get access to the "stations" you want to work with.

The PI-STAR software will let you connect to up to three servers, the WEARC server will need to take one of those spots. We suggest you leave the Brandmeister server as your main connection and add the club server as a secondary server.

A set of rules determines which server gets a request for a channel/station. We suggest you configure the D-STAR software to keep all requests except those for the club channels. That way only the club talk groups will get routed to the club server.

Details for the club server are:

    IP address: 108.61.23.136

    Password pasw0rd

    Time-slot: 2

Supported talk Groups:

    Club Chat: 315019 - considered the calling chanel

    Club Chat 2: 315020 - considered the move to have a long QSO channel

    Echo-test : 315021 - record a section of the call and plays it back to you. useful for testing

The previous TG 310 and TG 2 through Brandmeister has been discontinued because they now requier a custom server connection which is not justified for our level of traffic.

Remember there is also a dashboard for the club switch at https://www.wearc.org/monitor

The actual setting of your PI-Star will depend on how you want it programed, The settings needed for the club switch assuming you use the network 2 slot are:

[DMR Network 2]

Enabled=1

Name=WEARC-switch

Address=108.61.23.136

Port=62030

TGRewrite=2,315000,2,315000,40

Password=passw0rd

Location=1

Debug=0

TGRewrite0=

You can edit this in directly using the expert mode and DMR server settings, just add this test. You will need to have the PI-STAR configured for DMR Gateway (set in the configuration menu).

Once you have set up your PI-STAR you will need to add the club talk groups to your radio.

For the AnyTone radios the setting should look something like this:

Channel Settings

 

Digital/Contact/Talk Group

 

The actual frequencies must match those you used for setting up the Hot Spot