WPSD: a modern Pi-Star replacement for an MMDVM hotspot

Pi-Star is familiar to anyone who has ever held an MMDVM hotspot. But its author has barely released updates for a long time, and the images still date back to Bullseye. If you are only now building a hotspot in 2026, it makes sense to go straight for WPSD: an actively developed Pi-Star fork with a reworked dashboard, fresh Raspberry Pi images and a pile of small conveniences. Let's break down what it is and how to get it running on your DMR network.

What WPSD is

WPSD stands for W0CHP-PiStar-Dash — named after the author's callsign, Chip (W0CHP). Originally it was a rewritten web front end for Pi-Star, but the project grew into a standalone distribution: its own OS build, its own installer, its own dashboard. All the usual digital modes are supported — DMR, D-STAR, YSF (System Fusion), P25, NXDN and POCSAG. Inside is the same MMDVMHost stack by G4KLX as in Pi-Star, so the hardware and the logic stay familiar.

The main thing to understand right away: WPSD is hotspot software, not a "new firmware for radios". You still program the radio through the CPS with your own codeplug. WPSD lives on a Raspberry Pi with an MMDVM board and connects your hotspot to the network — exactly as Pi-Star did.

How WPSD differs from Pi-Star

• Active development. Updates come out regularly, the dashboard updates "at the press of a button" and automatically, while classic Pi-Star is effectively frozen.
• A new dashboard. A reworked interface: handier logs, mode status, settings. It looks different from the old Pi-Star, but you get used to it quickly.
• A fresh OS. There is a build based on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, whereas the old Pi-Star images are stuck on Bullseye.
• Support for new hardware. The image is universal and runs on the Raspberry Pi 5, Pi 4, Pi 3 and Pi Zero 2 W.
• AutoAP out of the box. If the hotspot can't find a network, it raises its own access point for setup — more on that below.

Can you "upgrade" Pi-Star to WPSD

There is no direct in-place upgrade from a Bullseye Pi-Star image to a Bookworm WPSD image — it's a clean install on a new SD card. The WPSD dashboard, however, can be installed on top of an already working Pi-Star with a separate command (see below). For a new hotspot it's simpler and cleaner to take the ready-made image.

Installation: image or on top of Pi-Star

Method 1 — the ready-made image (recommended)

The simplest path for a new hotspot:

1. Download the right WPSD image for your board from the project site.
2. Write it to a microSD card (4 GB minimum). The WPSD team recommends Balena Etcher: the image is already pre-configured, and tools with post-write steps can "break" it. The .xz archive is unpacked by the writer automatically.
3. Insert the card into the Raspberry Pi, connect the MMDVM board and apply power.

Method 2 — the dashboard on top of an existing Pi-Star

If you already have Pi-Star running and only want the new dashboard, it's installed with a single command over SSH:

curl -Ls https://w0chp.net/WPSD-Install | sudo env NO_SELF_UPDATE=1 bash -s -- -id

Mind the spaces and the double dash -- before the flags — without them the installer won't run. This command installs the dashboard without the author's branded CSS styling.

First boot and AutoAP

After writing the image and powering on for the first time, give the hotspot a couple of minutes to boot. From there, two scenarios:

• Have Ethernet? Plug in the cable — the hotspot lands on the network right away, and the dashboard opens at http://wpsd.local/.
• Wi-Fi only? AutoAP kicks in: after roughly 2–5 minutes (longer on slow boards) the hotspot raises its own access point named WPSD-Setup. Connect to it from a phone or laptop and open the dashboard to enter your home network.

In the Bookworm builds the Wi-Fi setup wizard itself has been reworked: after you enter the network details a reboot is no longer required — the hotspot switches to your access point on its own.

Connecting to a DMR network

The most important point for us: WPSD connects to its DMR master exactly as Pi-Star does. In the DMR mode configuration section you specify the network server address, the hotspot ID and the connection parameters. Only the look of the settings changes, while the logic itself — "enter the server and the ID" — stays the same.

For the private DMRhub network this means: in the DMR settings you point to our master instead of the public BrandMeister/TGIF servers, enter the private DMR ID you were issued — and the hotspot registers on our network. No special "dedicated version" of WPSD is needed for this.

Color Code and frequency

Don't forget the basic over-the-air parameters on the hotspot side: the simplex frequency (for 70 cm that's the 430–440 MHz band, for 2 m it's 144–146 MHz under the Russian plan) and the Color Code. The same values must be set in the radio's codeplug, otherwise there will be no link.