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John Martins'
Amateur Radio from near Empire Michigan USA


Other Useful Pages:

W8TVC.COM

IOOK.ORG

Rubber Ducks

VHF Propagation

 

Setting up the RP2000V DStar repeater is done via the USB ports on the front of the unit and a Windows based program you run on your computer.

Yea, you can retire the diddlesticks and the greenies, DStar is software controlled and configured. Sadly, many of the configurable items that repeater owners are accustomed to are not available for setting in DStar.

At some point (PLEASE- do NOT hold your breath!) I may check to see if the DStar configuration programs can be made to work in Linux with the WINE libraries, or via a virtualized Windows using VmWare Fusion on a Macintosh. I'm rather doubful due to Icom having proprietary USB drivers, but it's worth a casual look.

Just remember that it talks via USB-- so if your newest computer runs Win95 or older you'll have to break a $20 and head on down to GoodWill and pick up something newer.

I have NOT heard any rumors that Icom was planning a DOS or CPM version of the controlling program.

 

Here's a closeup of where you plug your USB cable into the unit for programming.

As you can see, there is a separate jack for the transmitter side vs the receiver side. Correspondingly, there is a different control program for each.

As with programming the DStar transceivers, you will want to READ THE MANUAL for the full instructions.

Thankfully, programming the repeater seemed to be an easier process than programming the radio.

 

The Icom software will install virtual devices on your computer. You can see these from the device manager.

It's been a year since I programmed mine, and I've long since nuked the laptop that was used in programming (so I cannot quickly go back to view the device list). I seem to remember that Icom installed two separate devices here-- one that talked to the transmitter and another that talked to the receiver. They were virtual serial ports and you will want to jot down their particulars (virtual port number, etc) as they are installed.

If you start the program without having the repeater plugged in you will get a nice error message. This message also appears if you don't have the virtual-usb-com-port setting set correctly.

A quick pull of the menu reveals how you can setup the program to talk to the virtual com port that Icom installed on your system.

This message box should be self explanatory-- and it's the reason you wanted to jot down the particulars of the USB port drivers that were installed.

This is the only page of the RP2000V setup program.

Yea, you get to set the TX and the RX frequency. The determination of which you are setting is decided by which USB socket on the front of the RP2000V you are plugged into.

There are no other user configurable settings on the RP2000V. The repeater callsign and a few other parms are set with the RP2C controller setup program.

As I type this I really wonder if it was really cheaper to go the USB configuration route as opposed to putting some thumbwheels on the front of the box. Perhaps they figure that they can add additional configuration options later on.

Most likely, there are service features available via the USB port that are not part of the customer package. It sure would be nice to someday have access to the service software for this.


ver 8/08