New “TextCapture” feature, the SMS Store-And-Forward service you can now enable in your Self-Care!

If you found it inconvenient that you can only receive SMS when your DMR radio is turned on, within repeater/hotspot coverage, and not busy … Brandmeister has a solution!

Thanks to the hard work of Artem and the Brandmeister beta testing team, you now have the ability to turn on “Text Capture” in your self-care, a feature that will store text messages sent to you if your radio is not reachable at the time of sending, and delay delivery until your RadioID becomes active on the Brandmeister DMR network.

Important Requirement

In order for this feature to work, you need to ensure that your radio sends an acknowledgment of SMS reception back to the BrandMeister network. Otherwise, BrandMeister will keep sending the messages, and you will be spammed!

So before turning on this feature, make sure your radio manufacturer has implemented SMS acknowledgment, and that you have enabled this feature in your codeplug. (We will provide a web-based tool to assist in checking if your radio acknowledges properly. Stay tuned!)

How does it work?

Illustration of a DMR Radio sending an SMS to another radio over the Brandmeister Network

By default, Text Capture is turned off. When someone sends an SMS to your RadioID, if the sender and the recipient are not on the same frequency and timeslot, the message is routed to the Brandmeister master server where your radioID was last seen and sent over the same repeater/hotspot you were using. If your radio gets it, great. If not, it’s lost and it won’t be re-delivered.

Brandmeister SMS routing when Text Capture is turned off

Once you turn on the Text Capture feature in your self-care, any data call sent to your radioID (including SMS, IRS, etc.) will be handled by BrandMeister. When an SMS is sent to your RadioID, Brandmeister will capture the message, send an acknowledgment to the sender, attempt delivery to your radio, and wait for it to acknowledge receipt of the SMS. If no acknowledgment is received, Brandmeister will keep sending the message on a regular basis until an acknowledgment is received, for a maximum duration of 7 days. After that, the message will be purged and there is no way to recover it.

Brandmeister SMS routing when Text Capture is turned on

Again, it’s important you keep in mind that once the feature is turned on, your radio will only receive data calls initiated by Brandmeister.

Exceptions

The store-and-forward feature only works with Brandmeister subscribers.

SMS from external services (such as automated SMS services, DAPNET messages, etc.) are sent directly to the recipient.

SMS cannot pass through gateways with other DMR networks.

Turning Text Capture on and off

Log on to your BrandMeister self-care page

At the top right of the page, click on your callsign, and select “Selfcare”

Toggle the “Text Capture” option ON or OFF: