What is STARnet?
STARnet Digital is a new application for use with D-STAR (Digital Smart Technology for Amateur Radio) that builds upon Smart Technology for Amateur Radio, creating dynamic networks of D-STAR radio stations through the worldwide network of D-STAR gateways and repeaters.
The fundamental building block of a STARnet Digital network is the Group. Each Group is accessed by a Group Callsign. User radios subscribe to a Group by putting the Group Callsign in the destination (UR) address of the D-STAR radio header and keying their transmitter. Once subscribed, any transmissions directed to the Group will be automatically relayed to the repeater where the subscribing station was last heard. The subscribing station can move from repeater to repeater and upon a transmission from the subscribing station to the repeater, the Group will automatically redirect Group transmissions to the subscribing station’s new repeater.
D-STAR was designed to use addressable communications where the originating station selected the destination station by placing the callsign of the remote station in the destination (UR) field of the D-STAR radio. The D-STAR gateway network is responsible for keeping track of individual stations and routing communications based on the destination callsign. This is a one-to-one relationship and creates complications if more than two stations wish to communicate over a variety of gateways and repeaters.
Early D-STAR gateway software was and continues to be closed source with no Application Program Interface (API). To facilitate wide area communications, including a large network of stations, industrious developers created “bolt on” linking technology that “sniffs” network traffic and relays it “out of band” between gateways delivering it to other repeaters for retransmission. We applaud this work and believe that it will continue to provide needed functionality for certain types of network activity.
STARnet Digital takes the native, callsign routed, approach to creating a nework of subscribing stations. The STARnet Digital server looks like a D-STAR repeater to a gateway. The STARnet Digital “repeater” advertises itself to the network, and individual Groups report through that repeater as if they were just another user station with a Group Callsign. Existing D-STAR gateways do not have to add any special software or hardware for its users to subscribe to STARnet Digital Groups, the subscribing stations simply set the destination (UR) address in their radio to the Group Callsign of the Group they wish to communicate with; no linking, no unlinking, no exclusivity of Groups which the repeater can relay.
If you would like to try or use the CNHARC STARnet digital repeater, please feel free!
Simple change the UR callsign to ‘STN264 A’ and transmit. You will receive a slow data message back that should show you ‘logged on’.
Once you have logged on, you will be available to receive transmissions that other stations send to the STN264 A user.
To reply, you would need to have a channel programmed with the UR as STN264 A or use your RX-CS button to quickly modify the UR so you can reply.
Here is an example of a channel programmed to use STN264 A on W1JY C:
UR: STN264 A
RPT1: W1JY C
RPT2: W1JY G
MY: xxxxxx <-(your callsign here)
Once you join, in theory you should always be a member. If you wanted to un join the group, you would transmit a UR of STN264 T to the gateway and should receive back a ‘logged off’ slow data message.
UR: STN264 T
RPT1: W1JY C
RPT2: W1JY G
MY: xxxxxx <- (your callsign here)
A great use for this would be for an announcement etc. We can create multiple groups (STN264 B, STN264 C) etc that could be used for other group calls.
We have also found that this function does NOT work when you are on a hotspot. You must be on a repeater gateway for this to work. Give it a try!