Creating and Downloading a DMR ID Database by Joseph Stephen, VK7JS Email: vk7js@faithfulgenerations.com 3 February 2022 Plese turn on word wrap if reading this in a text editor. If you wish to hear the callsign or name of the person you just received in DMR mode, you can download a DMR database to your radio via the CPS software. If the other radio sends Talker Alias information, your radio will announce the first field, however if it doesn't, unless you have a database in your radio, it will only read the DMR ID. Please note! while enabling Talker Alias on your radio allows other stations to see your custom message, it is not compatible with some repeaters, and may result in other stations not hering your audio. It is advisable to test this first. If stations complain that they cannot hear your audio, disable Talker Alias from the Options menu and reboot your radio. Brandmeister works with Talker alias but the Markc and TGIF networks may not. Hotspots and simplex operation should work fine. Having a database in your radio however is a safer way of determining who is calling you because it does not rely on Talker Alias information being present in the DMR signal and will work on repeaters which are not compatible with Talker Alias. Because the database may have lots of information, and the radio only announces the first field for brevity, you may as well only include that information in the database. For example, I only included the CallSign, and limited the record length to 7 characters. This enables you to include tens of thousands of entries in the database. You can download DMR ID databases in csv format from the Internet from various sources. You will however need to edit any files you retrieve unless they are specifically exported for OpenGD77. You can edit them in Excel or another spreadsheet program. First prepare your csv file. It must have at least three columns, but the third can be left blank (except for the header). I.e. the file must contain a line of headers and then a line for each entry. The headers are: ID, Callsign, Details. For example, the csv file might look like the following: ID,Callsign,Details 5050360,VK7JS,Joseph Stephen or, if you just want the callsign for brevity, it would look like this, note the final comma on each line because the third column is blank. ID,Callsign,Details 5050360,VK7JS, If you prepare this in Excel, the IDS must be in ascending order. The only way I could get this to import was to save the csv using the CSV Macintosh format. Open the CPS software and go to the Extras menu. Next, choose Download Callsign Database. There are two important edit fields you must fill out before attempting to import data. The first is the record length, and the second is the ID prefix to import. If you do not put any text in the prefix edit, no records will be imported as I found out after numerous tries and much frustration. Since the radio only announces the first field after the ID, and since my CSV file only included the ID and callsigns, I set my record length to 7 characters, just long enough for a callsign. I entered 505 into the unnamed edit which is the prefix field for Australia. You can enter another prefix once you've successfully imported some records from the CSV file, until the table is full. Next, press Enter on the Import CSV button, shift tab twice and select the file you wish to import. When you choose the Open button, focus seems to stick on the "Write to GD77 button." You can alt tab away to the main dialog and tab into the table. All of the entries starting with the prefix you entered will be imported into the table. You can then enter a different prefix and import again, until the table is full. Unfortunately, you can import more into the table than can be written to the radio. From experience, for a record length of 7 characters, you can import about 50,000 entries. Memory Considerations. There is a dedicated 256 KB of memory set aside for the DMR ID database plus some memory shared with the voice prompts. Basically, if the total size of the db is less than 448K you should not clobber DMR voice tags. If you don’t use DMR voice tags but do use custom voice prompts, then you can use 512k. If you don’t use custom voice prompts, then you can use 544k 544 k is the maximum for the db on the GD77. The DM1801 has an extra 1 MB of flash but I don’t know if it is all useable. The exact number of entries you may import will depend on the record length you specify. The longer the length, the more info you can store for each ID, but the less overall entries you can store. Remember, the radio will display more information than is spoken. Only the first field (after the ID) will be announced for brevity. You can even edit the table by tabbing to the grid and pressing the Spacebar. You can then tab to the fields and edit them. Once you've finished importing and editing the table, you can then tab to the Write to GD77 button and press enter on it, of course, you must connect your radio and power it on first. If you want to download the database to a different supported radio model, choose it from the edit combo before selecting the Write to GD77 button. Once you've downloaded the database to your radio, you can then enable the announcement of the DMR ID from the Sound Options menu (or Options menu on the GD77S). After a DMR reception, you will either hear the first field of the talker alias info from the transmission, or the first field after the ID for the info from your database for the ID who just transmitted. If you don't want the automatic announcement, you can turn off DMR ID from the Sound Options menu, and just press SK1 or long hold SK1 (only the latter for the GD77S) to repeat the last heard info as part of the normal voice prompting for the current channel or VFO frequency. End of document.