W0CHP.net

Do you want to sell more units and make more users happy with your products? Keep reading…

Sometimes, a match is truly made in heaven. And after some deliberating, I’ve agreed to place my WPSD project under the M17 Project umbrella.

There is, and always has been, very strong synergy and shared goals between the M17, OpenRTX and WPSD ecosystems. One of those cardinal goals, is paving the way for future ham radio – free from patent encumberances and manufacturer influence.

This “marriage” of projects so-to-speak, makes strategic sense in many ways. Most importantly, being our commitments to 100% free and open source initiatives in order to place amazing amateur radio technology and “vehicles” into amateur radio operators’ hands.

Additionally, both projects have grown exponentially over the past couple of years. With this kind of growth, comes more requirements, challenges and visions. It was important to me that WPSD remain impactful and sustainable. Through this project partnership, these goals will remain attainable, and help spread truly open digital voice mode operation across the globe for years to come.

Thirdly, both projects have large and vibrant user, development and support communities. Combining these forces will make it even easier and simpler to bring these truly freedom-centric technologies to countless ham shacks across the globe.

The combination of these two open source digital voice technologies will enable more innovation, more choice and a better user experience. I hope that you are as excited as I and the M17 team are!

…or, “R/O no mo, yo.” 😆

Most users are accustomed to W0CHP-PiStar-Dash (and Pi-Star) having a forced Read-Only file system by default. While this can be useful, it’s unnecessary in W0CHP-PiStar-Dash and in fact, is a pain in the ass sometimes.

Soon, when W0CHP-PiStar-Dash automatically updates itself at night, or when users invoke an update, the file-system will no longer be in Read-Only mode by default.

There seems to be lots of confusion with W0CHP-PiStar-Dash (WPSD) and DMR functionality. This document serves to hopefully clear that up.

Many repeated questions and statements have surfaced since releasing WPSD, so the following is a compiled list of the FAQs and FMS we have gathered over time… You need to know/remember, that this software was derived (“forked”) from the original Pi-Star software, and has diverged & changed so much, it’s now quite different. Expect to learn and figure out these differences and nuances. It really has become, and continues to become, it’s “own” software.

Due to the (honestly, unexpected) growth and popularity of W0CHP-PiStar-Dash, two wonderful users/fans¹ have setup online support and chat communities for users of my software:

• W0CHP-PiStar-Dash Facebook Group (Courtesy of Daren, 2E0LXY)

• W0CHP-PiStar-Dash Discord Server (Courtesy of Mark, 2E1CEQ)

After many, many months of development and testing, W0CHP-PiStar-Dash now runs the Bullseye version of Raspberry Pi OS.

If you’d like to run the more modern and supported Bullseye version of WPSD, you will need to install the WPSD Disk Image.

Update 10/7/22:

Network move complete; all systems operational.

Beginning October 5, the various resources hosted on the W0CHP.net network will experience intermittent, and some extended outages and downtime.

The network is moving to a different physical location, but will retain the same asynchronous fiber connections speeds, IPs, etc.

I anticipate the outages lasting no more than 48 hours. Once fully complete, I will update this post accordingly.

Resources that will be affected

• This very website
• Connectivity to the XLX-493 reflector/gateway and its web-based dashboard.
• The W0CHP.net Git Repositories
• The installer program for W0CHP-PiStar-Dash will not be available (hosted on the above Git repo).
• Various backend resources that enable the auto-updates to occur on W0CHP-PiStar-Dash installations.

Greetings gracious hams! As some of you know, I operate the XLX493 Reflector. Currently, it supports both DMR and YSF protocols. However, I do not posses the necessary hardware for trans-coding the D-Star protocol.

And since my reflector has been getting more traffic lately, I’m putting a feeler out there to other hams who run a D-Star-enabled reflector to see if they’d be gracious enough to peer with reflector (more specifically, Module E, since it’s the busiest module.

I keep/use a hotspot in my truck, and I’ve always wanted a way to manage/switch/connect/disconnect from reflectors, talkgroups, etc., hands-free; using only my voice.

I’ve begun work on a small project to allow me to do just that. And no, this is not an April Fool’s joke. 😆

Check it out…