DMR Setup on Anytone D878UV with APRS/SMS

Table of Contents

The Anytone D878UV is quite a nice DMR (Digital Mobile Radio) capable radio packed with features like APRS (Reporting only), Bluetooth and GPS. It’s no surprise that this is my favourite DMR radio and I can recommend it if you are getting started with DMR for the first time. This post will help you get DMR up and running on your Anytone D878UV.

DMR Basic setup #

The first step you need to do is to program your DMR ID into your codeplug. Are you new to DMR and don’t have an ID yet? You can request one here: https://register.ham-digital.org/

After you got your DMR ID you can use the programming software to set up DMR for your radio.

Setup your DMR ID #

In the sidebar, go to the “Digital -> Radio ID List” and add your DMR id with your callsign as a name in the 1 slot. Then go to “Digital -> Talk Alias” and set the “Send talk alias” option to On. This will transmit your callsign as metadata in the DMR call.

From what I have been told it is still good practice to ID like you would on a analog frequency. For radios without Alias/Contact support, an other ham using your radio or outdated user lists. Keep this in mind :)

Importing the DMR user list #

Download the latest user dump from https://ham-digital.org/status/users.csv and open the programming software. By pressing the menu “Tool -> Import” you can select this file as the “Digital Contact List”. This will show the call/country on the display whenever a DMR user is received.

Talk group setup #

DMR works with “talk groups”, an id number that represents a room of people or the DMR id of a person to make a private call directly to another DMR user. This is the contact list you can call people from the radio. You also get the option to provide a manual id for a call, but this is easier to use.

Programming software, DMR talk group list

Channel setup #

One more thing! You need to setup the actual radio channels now. For this, you need to know DMR repeaters or own a hotspot. I’ll use a hotspot channel as an example, setting up a hotspot (often MMDVM hotspots, or an Openspot) is not included in this article.

Be sure to set the radio ID to your callsign, as configured on the ID page, the talk slot, color code and frequency. The contact is the default contact if you press the PTT button, you can change that on the radio by going to the talk group list, selecting a talk group and pressing “Select contact”. You can also go to the talk group list and press the PTT button on a selected item to only transmit to that ID for one shot.

You can call 9990 (Private call! Not group call, a common mistake) to test if DMR is setup correctly. It should transmit a recording of what you said back to you.

Congratulations, it should now work! Now for the advanced items.

APRS (Analog Package Reporting System) Setup #

Most HAM’s already know APRS, you can also use DMR for APRS reporting. For this, you need to setup the APRS part in your codeplug to include digital APRS, for digital APRS you need to know your DMR master node ID and GPS transmit location. Since I am from the Netherlands this is 204999, the first three digits of the master server followed by 999, but consult the Brandmeister wiki to be sure and replace the value you have in the APRS TG.

After this, APRS should work in the menu of your radio.

DMR SMS #

DMR allows SMS to be send, we can use the Brandmeister network for this as well!

For this to work correctly, you need to make sure your Anytone radio uses M-SMS, the Motorola standard. After this, you need to make sure that you have the correct settings on the Brandmeister Network. On the Selfcare page, make sure your brand is set to “Chinese radio” and edit your APRS call as you like with a SSID.

Then you need to setup SMS standard for the Anytone. If you don’t SMS might not be received or garbled data. For this you have to send three separate text messages to DMR ID 262995 containing: CONFIG ON CONFIG SHORT CONFIG DELAY 10

After this, you can send CONFIG to get the active configuration as SMS back to your radio.

Some users have reported that having “Digi APRS RX” on in the channel configuration can give issues with receiving SMS on the Anytone, if you want to use SMS leave this off.

DMR Information service #

Some DMR SMS numbers are handy to know. For example, DMR ID 262993 which is an information service. You can send the following commands:

Command	Does what?
help	Sends the available commands.
echo	Sends a response back to test SMS functionality
wx	Weather information at Repeater location.
wx help	Weather command help.
wx ,	Weather information in city.
wx gps	Weather information from your last transmitted GPS location.
metar	Airport style METAR information by ICAO code.
gps help	GPS command help.
gps	Shows the GPS position from the radio, also shows distance and direction to repeater.
gps set	Set GPS position as “home”.
gps home	Shows distance and direction in relation to the stored “home” position.
gps	Shows distance and direction in relation to DMR user by callsign.

You can also send a message to DAPNET using this, a HAM Radio system for pagers. To do this you can send a message to DMR ID 262994 containing (no quotes): “[CALLSIGN] [Your message]”.

DMR SMS Queueing #

There is a way to store SMS messages for if you aren’t on the radio at the moment and send by callsign instead of DMR ID. Something I can recommend is

to enable direct message receiving, if you are online you will still get the SMS directly after your radio sends a APRS packet. Do this by sending a message to DMR ID 262995 containing (no quotes): “DIRECT ON”

You now have the following commands:

Command	Does what?
DIRECT ON	Enables direct sending of SMS to your radio when reporting in with APRS.
[CALLSIGN] [Message]	Sends a message to a callsign.
INBOX	Sends a response back with messages in queue.
GET 1	Sends the first message back from the queue.
GET	Sends the all messages from the queue.
DELETE 1	Deletes the first message back from the queue.
DELETE	Deletes the all messages from the queue.

DMR SMS to Mobile phone SMS gateway #

Finally, wouldn’t it be cool if you could send an actual text message to a mobile phone number from your HAM radio? That’s certainly what the folks behind SMSGTE must have thought. This system works with APRS messages and acts as a gateway between a mobile phone and ham radio messaging, luckily there is a way to send APRS messages via DMR as well. To start, you add your own mobile number (this will be a public message! Please keep that in mind). You need to know your APRS DMR gateway ID, this will be the same ID from the APRS part of this article, so in my case 204999.

Command	Does what?
SMSGTE #mynumber add [Phone number]	Adds your phone number to the SMSGTE platform, linked to your callsign with ssid (APRS).
SMSGTE @me [Message]	Sends a text message to your added number. (you need to do this to get the access number)
SMSGTE @[call]-[ssid] [Message]	Sends a text message to the phone number of the HAM.