Category: DMR News

2021 has been a great year at Brandmeister DMR. The development team once again spoiled the DMR Amateur Radio community with many great features. Let’s review the most significant ones:

A new hoseline on steroids – QSOs on Brandmeister DMR talkgroups can be heard using a web browser on virtually any device, using the brand new Hoseline with improved audio, volume normalizing, multiple talkgroups listening, instant play, and many other features described in detail in this article.

Enhanced repeaters coverage plots – The coverage plots are more precise than they used to, and are updated minutes after making a change in repeater’s data.

Users and Repeaters Self Service– The days of the default “passw0rd” for hotspots and repeaters are over. The registration process on Brandmeister ensures that ham’s IDs are protected, and the traffic is not disturbed by rogue devices or gateways. Most new users are now automagically approved, and it only takes 5 minutes now for a new repeater to become available and manageable on Brandmeister DMR! Thanks to the collaboration of Brandmeister and RadioID developers, the repeater data is imported in Brandmeister, and sysop rights are automatically added. No need to ask and wait for this to be done manually!

A faster dashboard – The dashboard is now responsive, repeater owners can set passwords on their own, hotspot and repeaters list display twice as fast as they used to, and the last-heard is faster than it has ever been!

Brandmeister Core updates – the core Brandmeister software has seen 48 updates in 2021, bringing lots of performance improvements as well as amazing new features such as the Asterisk’s AudioSocket protocol, TextCapture, and the optimization of Wires-X bridging.

We recognize that all these improvements would not have been possible without:

• The time and devotion of the developpers involved in the many aspects of Brandmeister
• Hams contributing their time to testing and reporting issues to the development team
• Master administrators maintaining, troubleshooting, and updating the servers that make Brandmeister accessible to ham radio operators worldwide
• Support teams spending countless hours helping fellow ham operators
• User’s donations
• Users providing computing ressources and hosting

We have more to come for 2022 … so stay tuned, and Happy New Year!

Did you know there are 20+ technologies that make the BM magic possible?

Brandmeister’s developers chose the best and most bleeding-edge technologies available to create the most efficient and featureful Amateur Radio DMR Network ever conceived.

To give you an idea of the technologies symbiosis beauty happening within Brandmeister, here is a list of the main ones we use:

Databases

• Tarantool on master servers
• mySQL on back-end servers
• Redis on Lastheard back-end servers
• MongoDB on Lastheard back-end servers

Languages

• C & C++ for a most optimized core of Brandmeister DMR
• LUA for ultra-fast calls processing on masters
• NodeJS for back-end processing
• Javascript for the dashboard
• PHP for web functions on master servers
• HTML for the dashboard and master web pages
• Python for scripts on master and back-end servers
• Bash for scripts on masters and back-end servers

Data Transfer

• REST APIs for front-end to back-end communications
• Fast-Forward a network protocol created by Brandmeister to transfer communications between masters at very high speed
• Mosquitto for master-network data transfer
• D-Bus for message bus system

Operating Systems

• Debian Linux for the masters and back-end servers
• Windows server for the processing of coverage maps

Applications

• Nginx as a web server
• HAProxy for TCP/HTTP load balancing

If you have expertise in programming with these technologies and can volunteer several hours per week, contact us to see if your skills are needed!

Hotspots connecting to a BrandMeister Master Server in the USA will now require their users to set a hotspot security password. The configuration change will happen on the following dates:

Master 3101 : November 27th, 2020

Master 3102: December 4th, 2020

Master 3103: December 11th, 2020

Users who already have a password set don’t need to take any action at this time.

For general step by step instructions, you may refer to this post. The link can also be found in the FAQ section of the USA Wiki Page under the Hotspot Configurations section.

In May 2020, the number of amateur radio operators who have created a Self-Care account on the BrandMeister DMR network has reached 50,000 unique call-signs.

This milestone is a good opportunity to look back at the exponential growth of the network since it started just 4 years ago, and to say thank you to all those who made it happen: developers, users, bloggers, documentation writers, support teams and master admins.

2016

2020

To register your self-care account, go to https://brandmeister.network/?page=register

The USA 3108 Master Server will be removed on or around May 30th, 2020. The 3101, 3102, and 3103 masters have more than enough capacity to take the load.

Anyone with existing bridges connections (CC links, XLX, OpenBridge, etc.) or if you are a repeater owner with a cluster on 3108, please open a ticket on the BrandMeister Support Portal under the BMUSA section and we will get you moved to another master.

BrandMeister will be present at the Ham Radio Friedrichshafen 2019 exhibition in Germany on June 21st, 22nd and 23rd.

Come by the stand A1-666 to meet some of the team members; we will be happy to discuss and answer your questions.

If you are a seasoned programmer and would like to volunteer a few hours per week coding for BrandMeister, this will be a great opportunity to introduce yourself!

We look forward to meeting with you soon!

On the 1st of march we will phase out the GPS destination 5057. If this is the destination ID you are currently using in your codeplug, please update it as soon as possible using the instructions below.

You will need to replace the GPS destination with the first 3 digits of any active BrandMeister Master Server ID (ie: 204 for Netherlands, 208 for France, 310 for USA, etc.) followed by 999. For example the following destinations are valid for GPS destinations: 204999 (because there are masters 2041 and 2042), 208999 (because there is a 2082 master), 310999 (because there are masters 3101,3012, 3103, 3108), etc.

The first 3 digits of the GPS destination does not have to match those of the BrandMeister master server where your repeater or hotspot is connected to. For example, you can use GPS destination ID 208999 even if the repeater you use is connected to master 2042.

How to choose the GPS destination ID for your codeplug ? If the country where you operate has a BrandMeister server, the most logical choice is to use the first 3 digit of your country’s master ID and add 999 (for example 262999 if you are in Germany). If your country doesn’t have a master server, use the first digits of the one closest from your location.