Hotspots

Are not in range of one of the repeaters on the system but would like to join the group? Here is a tutorial on how to build your own hotspot to access the system. Let’s start with a parts list. I have built several of these and currently they are about $75 to build.

You will need the following items

A Raspberry Pi Zero WH.

A power supply.

A MMDVM Hat

I have purchased these from Ebay with great success. The hat here is a simplex hotspot.

A Micro SD Card.

I like the SanDisk cards the best but any class 10 or higher will work.

Next we will cover the software required to make this work.

Pi-Star software cab be downloaded here. Be sure to download the latest version, the name will be Pi-Star_Rpi_Vx.x.x.x.

Next you will need to burn the image file to the SD card. I use Win 32 disk imager and it can be download here.

Also if you need to format your SD card download the SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows here. They do have a Mac version as well here.

After you have written the image to the SD card you will want to add your Wi-Fi network information the to root of the SD card so it will connect automatically to your network. The tool here will create the file needed to for your network. After you have crated the file copy it to the root of your SD card after you have written the Pi-Star image.

Now lets begin installing the software and setting up you pi.

The video below by W1MSG is a great tutorial for setting up the software.