Hi, I received my CS7000 today and it's working fine, but I have questions. If I get answers here, I'll try and write them up and add them to the wiki. Not really a CS7000 question, but in my Pi-Star hotspot configuration there's an M17 Startup Host option. It defaulted to M17-672, which is listed as the Pi-Star Multi-Reflector (MW0MWZ). It seemed to work fine. I switched to M17-M17, which is closer to me and also works. Does this setting matter, and how should I choose? I followed the wiki instructions to set frequencies and callsign. I found this wiki PR (https://github.com/M17-Project/cs7000-wiki/pull/3/files) on how to set a destination, which I set to M17-M17 C. Perhaps someone can merge that PR to make the directions easier to find. I know about #ECHO. What does #ALL do? Is there any way to save frequency and destination settings to make it easier to switch between them? I see Banks, Channels and Contacts in the menu, but they don't seem to have anything behind them yet. Relatedly, is there any CPS software for the radio yet? I see issues in both the OpenRTX (https://github.com/OpenRTX/OpenRTX/issues/158) and qdmr (https://github.com/hmatuschek/qdmr/issues/251) Github projects that seem related. I know those last two are probably just functionality that hasn't been built yet, but I thought I'd ask in case I missed something. Thanks! Jim N1ADJ

All- Here are my notes and information to share regarding the Maxon (or sometimes sold under the name Midland) model SD-125 UHF data radio. It is a programmable unit, the U2 model covers 440-470mhz although it will program out of band and work down to ~ 430mhz if desired. My goal here is to show what I did to modify my unit for direct discriminator and modulator access to use as an amateur digital radio hotspot. These radios show up on ebay and other flea market sites. I tested the ones I have on several amateur digital modes.. Dstar, P25, NXDN and now M17. I have not tried DMR. I can confirm that the SD-125 works great for M17 use. The radio can be operated at 1 watt output or 5 watts output. However be aware that the unit was not built for lengthy continuous transmissions. I have found running it at 1 watt in stock form, even though it gets warm to the touch is still within what I would consider to be reasonable temperature limits and I have even let it transmit during hour long Dstar nets with no concern for overheating. Mounting a heat sink for additional cooling would be advantageous and make the radio look even more jazzy. For my own unit I bypassed the PA module entirely and use the VCO output buffer transistor at 10 milliwatts RF output. I find that it covers my ham shack with plenty of RF and the unit stays cool indefinitely. A brief radio programming mention, setting the radio for narrow band operation works best. The picture above shows where I removed the two wires from the edge connector (the arrows) and attached extension wires. The white wire (tx audio to the modulator) goes to pin 7. The red wire (rx audio from discriminator) goes to pin 10. DB9 pin 1 = modulator = edge connector pin 2 DB9 pin 2 = disc. = edge connector pin 5 A correction I would make if doing it over again would be to pick the DB9 connector pin 7 for modulator. It is a "no connection" pin. By removing pin 1's connection from the top board edge connector takes away the ability to program the unit. I can of course resolder the white wire back to the edge connector but that's a hassle and I didn't think that through. My bad. Fortunately I have no real need to re-program the unit again any time soon so I'm okay with this. When using pi-star or WPSD under mmdvmhost radio settings, TXInvert=1 and RXInvert=0. A final comment and I'll wrap this up. Because these radios were built some 20 years ago I'm finding that they're all way off frequency. Be sure and check the transmitters on the bench and align via the VCO trimmer in the metal can on the bottom board if necessary. 73- Steve KA4YMY

Tell us what you use to get on air (or just over the Internet) with M17. Photos are welcomed. I currently have: - DroidStar running on my smartphone. I used it mostly for the Friday's net (now it's called "activity day"). - Module 17 1.0 connected to a Yaesu FTM-6000 (UHF). - ZUM Spot RPi v0.6 with WPSD. - DigiRig with M17-texting app running on my PC to send short text messages over RF (m17-tools offer voice mode support instead). - CS760 (CS7000-M17 prototype) handheld running OpenRTX. - Gameboy Advance running a custom ROM, generating baseband of the M17 packet mode. - Various SDRs running with M17 GNU Radio blocks (gr-m17).

Hello all: Up front, I will not be “leading” or organizing this project (if it gains any momentum). I tend to be lousy at that in general, and at the moment I don’t have the bandwidth to do so. I’m hoping this can be “crowd” project here, and once all of the elements have been identified, maybe then I can come in and do a consolidation writeup. I’m guessing that enough of the pieces are out there (that I don’t know about) that it’s largely a light integration project of figuring out how to put all of the existing pieces together. In Zero Retries 0165, I said: (https://www.zeroretries.org/i/147534885/a-better-analogy-from-a-genxer-m-and-linux) I can easily imagine setting up localized M17 repeaters that cover perhaps a college campus, that will probably get more use with data / messaging than digital voice. How to set up such an M17 repeater will be a big focus of the M17 book that I’m working on. I should have added in that mention that one mental model for this idea is that I’m absolutely confident that there a lot of students showing up on campus that will be using Meshtastic… and that it will grow very quickly if one person in a dorm is doing it and shows others how easy and inexpensive it is to get going. Why focus on M17? I think there’s a good story that can be told to students about the virtues of M17 in large part because it’s open source, it’s hackable, and there’s now a large enough ecosystem of options for accessing M17 on RF for those that want to experiment, for example doing their own mods on inexpensive radios such as what OpenRTX is doing - https://openrtx.org/#/?id=the-openrtx-project. One of the touchstones of what resonates* with students about Amateur Radio was this informative talk at DCC 2018 - Maintaining Student Interest in Amateur Radio by Skyler Fennell KG0SKY - https://youtu.be/LWN7dnzGRZ4?si=iHMd7GlD9yGaa6eI. He describes with some enthusiasm the use of DMR because the radios are cheap. One example is that there is no Amateur Radio club (there used to be) Western Washington University (WWU) - https://www.wwu.edu here in Bellingham Washington. There used to be, and perhaps a project like this might serve to rekindle some interest in Amateur Radio. WWU is an example of a small campus, small student body. But it should be able to scale to something bigger like this potential site for such a repeater is this from my time living near the Ohio State University campus - https://housing.osu.edu/roomsearch/morrill-tower. One of the things KG0SKY said was that whatever a student wants to get involved with, it has to be cheap, Cheap, and CHEAP! So… as much as I love the Connect Systems CS7000 M17, a $300 portable radio for a college student to use isn’t going to pass the “cheap, Cheap, CHEAP” test for large numbers of students getting involved in M17 over radio. Some additional points to potentially support this idea: The Open Source nature of this should play well not just with the students, but with the faculty. The local M17 system could be incorporated into EE curriculum. The local M17 system might even be able to be a project of the campus chapter of IEEE for students, which (perhaps some deeper pockets among the local IEEE community to help finance it) and it would be a great IEEE project. While this project shouldn’t depend on the CS7000 M17 @ $300, it shouldn’t preclude it either for those students that want one and consider it a reasonable purchase. So, here is the challenge to the M17 brain trust assembled here. To create interest about M17 on a college campus, I think we need to develop a couple of reference implementations for… A minimalist repeater to do M17. This doesn’t have to be "cheap, Cheap, CHEAP”, because as a shared resource / infrastructure, it can probably be funded with perhaps a “quick” ARDC grant (especially if it can be semi-standardized) - we’d like to do the “Reference 1.0” M17 Repeater, here’s the cost that our facilities folks quote for installation at the high point on campus, please send money. I’m being a big flip about this, but it shouldn’t be complicated. Of course,

So with all the Modifications being done to the Quansheng UV-K5/6 Radio like removing a chip and slapping on a Wafer Board for LW-SW All Band AM/SSB/ETC, Has anyone thought of if M17 could be added onto this Radio ?.. I mean hell it's the Swiss Army Knife of Radio's I'm just Genuinely Curious ? Rob..