Dabbling in DMR Part 1

After receiving my Black Friday radio and hotspot it was time to start figuring out DMR. I was having some difficulty getting the MMDVM hotspot onto my network (I will delve into that adventure in Part 2) so I decided to pull out my ZumSpot-USB and get that working.
Configuring the ZumSpot-USB was very easy. I simply downloaded and installed BlueDV  software and insert the ZumSpot-USB. There is one simple configuration screen.

Since I was only concerned with DMR I didn’t touch the D-Star, Fusion or AMBE sections. I simply filled in my callsign, COM port for the ZumSpot-USB, picked a frequency for the radio to communicate with the ZumSpot-USB and I filled in the optional latitude and longitude coordinates in the General section. The DMR section was just as easy. I put in my DMR ID, selected BM to use the Brandmeister network and selected talkgroup 3101 as the DMR master.
Programming the GD-73 wasn’t too difficult either. The CPS (Code Plug Software) and USB driver were available from Radioddity. Install the USB driver then the CPS. Once those are installed connect the radio via the micro-USB cable to the computer, turn the radio on and fire up the CPS. In the General Setting page I just needed to enter my callsign and DMR ID. Next I added Digital Contacts.

I had browsed the Brandmeister Talkgroup list  and picked a few groups that sounded interesting. I entered a name for each group and the TalkGroup ID into the Digital Contacts. I then added all the entries in my Digital Contacts into Digital RX Group 1.
From there I had to set up a channel for each contact.

On the page to add channels you can select to use high or low power to connect to the hotspot, if you want to add it to a scan list, Access policy (I changed to Always after taking this screen capture), a channel name which can be the same as the Digital Contact if you want, and the frequency of the hotspot. In the Digital section on the right part of the screen I selected the Digital Contact to associate to the channel. I also set all my channels to Color Code 1 and time slot 2 and selected Rx Group 1 that all the Digital Contacts were added to previously. Then I added my channels to Zone 1.

If you have more channels you can create more zones to organize them in a manner that works for you.
In the CPS you can also program the two front buttons, P1 and P2, for what you want each to do with a short press or a long press.
Once you have everything the way you want you are ready to write the code plug to the radio. You may also want to save the code plug to your computer in case something happens and the programming in the radio gets corrupted or you want to program additional radios with the same code plug.
With BlueDV and the radio both programmed I did some testing. Here are the screens of the ZumSpot-USB listening,

receiving

and transmitting.

I am not sure why when I transmit it doesn’t display my callsign but at it works. I also installed and configured BlueDV for Android on my phone

but so far that hasn’t been successful so that will be a puzzle for another day.

73
KA0SQL