David Cappello (KG5EIU)

This is a short guide on using an iphone/ipad App to discover ZUMSpots running Pi-Star on your local lan with this tool you can glean/discover the IP address along with the MAC address of your hotspot running pi-star

When you initially setup a ZUMspot MMDVM-based open source digital hotspot for HAM radio, using the pi-star image the default way to “get into” and configure the ZUMSpot is to http://pi-star.local. (or use the local IP address assigned) into it from any browser from another device that is connected to the same local network as the ZUMSpot.  (ethernet or WiFi).   In the main configuration of the pi-star you can change the hostname of the ZUMspot to something else.  After a while you may have forgot the new name and/or lost the IP address – or the ZUMspot got another IP address from the DHCP server off the local lan.  Lucky there is an App that you can run on your iPhone or iPad and “discover” the ZUMspot running pi-star.   Go grab the app “Discovery – DNS-SD Browser by Tildesoft from the Apple App Store.

Load that up and run it and when you do you will see a screen listing all the devices running Wide-Area Bonjour on the local area lan:

The cool thing with the Pi-Star software is that it is running Bonjour protocol (mDNS) and will advertise itself on the local lan as a Workgroup Manager (_workstation._tcp.) entity and you can find your ZUMs running pi-star by looking under Workgroup Manager:

Depending on what is on your local lan/network you may see some other “things” that are advertising themselves as Workgroup Manager – at this point I suspect you will recognizance the changed name of the pi-star or other pi-star enabled devices (ZUMspots) if you select one from the list – in this example I have several ZUMspots – I selected zum-star – it will show you the IP address (as a bonus you also will know the MAC address [b8:27:eb:be:97:eb] of the selected workstation)

Chances are if you don’t “see” anything then the ZUMspot/pi-star is not not the same LAN/Network or is misconfigured.   Now that you know the IP address you can use any browser to access it via IP address.  In the above example http://192.168.1.233 or http://zum-star.local. would work and you can get into the main screen:

Watch the short YouTube video of how to use the App:

-73! KG5EIU

PS if you are on a Mac running macOS look for the desktop app from Tildesoft and discover pi-star and other cool things on your local network.