M17 Project CC1200 – Amateur Radio Update

One exciting new(ish) protocol for Ham Radio users is the M17 Project. I’ll be pairing a CC1200 hotspot board with a Connect Systems CS7000 radio.
DMR users have long used an operating system called Pi-Star and WPSD to act as a gateway to their systems. Pi-Star and WPSD both included M17 support. I found that it was easiest and worked best under Pi-Star. The maintainer of both programs has removed M17 from their software. Currently my WPSD has the M17 removed since the last software update. I still have it on Pi-Star but I imagine it will go away with the next update.
Sadly, this is probably going to make a hit against the usability for M17 users. There are several other ways to connect to M17 and I’ll explore one of those today.
NOTE: I am not a super experienced M17 user as I just started using the protocol a a few months ago. As I set up a new device to connect to M17 yesterday (CC1200 hotspot board) the M17 folks had to hold my hand and work me through getting connected. It’s not hard at all but it isn’t intuitive. Especially, setting up the radio.