Chris, Satoshi's node adapter or hotspot board was the first, but the boards from the other two most common suppliers (Mark Phillips G7LTT/NI2O at http://www.gmskhotspot.com and Fred van Kempen PA4YBR at http://www.dutch-star.eu are also popular, and all three work with the DVAR Hot Spot software in both simplex and full duplex mode.
In addition, when David Lake G4ULF releases his "NI-Star" software, which will allow you to put up a fully G2 compliant D-Star repeater, that software will work both with Satoshi's firmware and Fred's firmware. So both firmwares and all three boards will be supported by NI-Star. See http://g4ulf.blogspot.com/ A good way to go about this is to first build a simplex Hotspot using one radio and DVAR Hot Spot software. Then add in the second radio and move to full duplex, still using DVAR. At that point you may decide the DVAR repeater, which supports DPlus linking, is everything you need, or you may decide you want to move to NI-Star, which should be released fairly soon. If you think you want to go that route, NI-Star is intended to run on the same platform recommended by ICOM for their repeaters and gateways -- CentOS. So someone in the club could be building up a PC according to the recomendations of the US Trust team and ICOM. Take a look at the "Joining the Network" article on www.dstarusers.org, or read it directly at http://dsyncg2.dstarusers.org/JoiningTheNetwork3.pdf I can't remember if I've seen you post on the gmsk_dv_node email list, but that is also a good place to get help with all things involving node adapter type hotspots and repeaters. Jim - K6JM ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Fowler To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 2:43 PM Subject: [DSTAR_DIGITAL] Building from parts I'm looking at the possibility of building a D-Star repeater from spare radios our club has. Is the Satoshi the de facto standard at doing this? http://d-star.dyndns.org/rig.html.en I have spare VHF and UHF Syntors. I have have some GE Equipment and an IC-RP3010. I'm not against buying other radios to use either. I'd like to get more people in our club involved and I think a project like this would help. 73, Chris k4fh
