It was recommended in blogs and other forums that one find an Elmer with an existing file and set it up. Now back when commercial radios like these were first in use, the configurations were burned to PROMs and plugged into the radios.
#ADAFRUIT DMR PROGRAMMING CODE#
The thing that I had heard quite a bit about was code plugs. After running through the form it takes about 48 hours for the ID to hit your email. All you have to have is a Technician Class ticket. It’s a simple process and you can step through it here. There is one required to configure your radio and uniquely identify it to the world. I recommend that before you buy your radio, you go get a DMR ID. And if I really got into this whole DMR thing, well, upgrades are part of the fun, right? And if it turned out that I didn’t have fun with it or that I couldn’t get it running, I wasn’t out much if it went to sit in The Drawer Of Forgotten Projects. At $99 for the radio and USB cable, it was quite a bargain.
I decided to go all in on the cheapest radio I could buy that someone had said anything positive about and that was the TYT MD-380 that can easily be obtained from Amazon. Like most people, I have constraints and one of them is money. A quick stroll through the repeater book got me where I needed to go, so all I needed was a radio.
Where to begin? Well, the odds were good that there would be a DMR repeater somewhere in the area and I was right. The idea got stuck in my head that I should check it out and when they said that it was the most radio fun you can have for under $200, they had my undivided attention. I have an ICOM 7100 that has D-Star but I’d not even played with that at all. I wasn’t really sure what it was, but as I listened, I got more and more into it. When I started listening to the Ham Radio Workbench podcast they were on quite a tear about DMR.