DMR GROUPS, CHANNELS, AND ZONES
Digital Mobile Radio provides new capabilities over legacy analog radios. One of the key benefits of DMR is the ability to Especially when programming groups, channels, and zones. Hopefully, this will help make it clearer
In analog you would simply program frequencies to a channel and that’s it. There is more with DMR, and you need to follow a bottom-up approach when programming your radio.
A DMR GROUP (Often called a “talkgroup” ) is a method of grouping or assembling multiple users (Radio ID’s) to a single contact. A Group or “talk group” is simply a group of users that need to talk to each other and hear all the communications in that group.
- An example would be all the maintenance personnel at a hospital would need to all share communications with each other. So, you would create the “maintenance” group.
Channels contain the information required to connect to the repeater or a direct channel and select the group. Each channel is programmed with the Channel Name, Frequencies, and group. There are many other settings, but for simplicity’s sake, this is the easiest way to select a different group (Or talkgroup).
A zone is just a grouping of individual channels.
Zones are a way of organizing a collection of channels. You can organize zones however you would like. Think of them as file folders. One way to organize the zones is based on location. The following list is an example of zones that are set up by location:
Zone 1 – Location 1 (users/repeaters)
Zone 2 – Location 2 (users/repeaters)
Zone 3 – Location 3 (users/repeaters) When you are programing your radios, remember to use a bottom-up approach: Group -> Channel -> Zone
Contact Hytera to learn more about Hytera DMR Radios and Push-to-Talk over Cellular Radios.
