The other day I was hammering away at FT8
and listening to reflector 30C on my D-Star setup. I use a SharkRF Openspot and an old Icom
880H.
K1VT was on the air for the first time,
accessing D-Star reflector 30C using his mobile phone instead of a D-Star
radio. In fact, he had a fully portable
setup and no expensive D-Star radios were involved. Sounded the sort of thing that many hams
would be interested in. (Normally with D-Star, you need a D-Star radio to access a D-Star repeater or Digital Voice access point. Using a PC and a D-Star compatible dongle will give you access but then you have to haul your PC everywhere.)
I listen to his description and emailed him
to ensure that I had the story right.
The whole thing hinges around the products
and interest groups set up by North West Digital Radio <nwdigitalradio.com> and <nw-digital-radio.groups.io>
Here are the basics:
•
He was using a NW Digital ThumbDV connected to
a Raspberry Pi model 3B.
•
The Pi was running Compass Linux which is
a derivative of Raspian Linux.
•
AmbeServer was the app running on the Pi.
•
On his Android phone he was running BlueDVAMBE. (Note that there
are two versions of BlueDV for Android, BlueDV and BlueDVAMBE) David, PA7LIM, has done all the work on
BlueDV.
•
From his mobile phone, he connected to the
AmbeServer, his desired reflector and then he went straight into the internet
and DStar around the world.
•
The AmbeServer is also accessible using Windows
and OSX devices using special apps.
