Repeater and Public Hotspot Operation

WPSD’s manual, Zero to Hero chapters, and default configuration are all written from the point of view of a single owner-operator running a personal hotspot. If that’s you, you can safely skip this page entirely — the defaults are correct and you don’t need to touch anything here.

This page is for the other audience: repeater keepers and anyone running a shared, multi-user, or fully public node. That’s a legitimate and common use of WPSD, it’s just a different configuration goal, so it gets its own page rather than being buried as a side note.

Access control: the Node Type setting

On the Configuration page, under the section marked “Caution: This section is for advanced multi-user hotspot or repeater usage only!”, you’ll find Node Type, with two options:

  • Private (the default) — only your own configured callsign/ID may key up through your hotspot on any mode. This is what every hotspot should be set to unless you have a specific reason to change it, and may also be a licensing requirement in some countries.

  • Semi-Public — allows additional callsigns/IDs you list in the accompanying Access List field to also use your hotspot.

Under the hood, this single toggle sets the SelfOnly option in MMDVMHost.ini for every mode at once — [DMR] SelfOnly, [D-Star] SelfOnly, [System Fusion] SelfOnly, [P25] SelfOnly, and [NXDN] SelfOnly. Private sets all five to 1; Semi-Public sets all five to 0 — but only once you’ve actually populated the Access List. If you select Semi-Public and leave the Access List empty, WPSD will not leave your node accidentally wide open — it silently falls back to SelfOnly=1 (Private) until you add at least one ID.

Tip

Semi-Public with a populated Access List is the right tool for a club hotspot, a shared family setup, or a small group of operators who all need access to one node — it’s not intended to make the node fully open to the general public.

True fully-open (public) access

If you’re running an actual repeater — with an antenna system serving anyone who can hit it, not a hotspot for a defined group — you generally want SelfOnly=0 with no ID restriction at all: any properly-formed transmission gets repeated, the same as any other amateur repeater.

This specific configuration — SelfOnly=0 with no whitelist gate — is not exposed as a dashboard toggle. WPSD’s Node Type control deliberately always ties SelfOnly=0 to a populated Access List, so there’s no accidental one-click way to fully open a node. To run a genuinely open repeater, set SelfOnly=0 directly for the relevant mode(s) via Admin -> Advanced -> Quick Editors -> MMDVMHost (or the Full Editor, for more direct control).

Note

This is a deliberate design choice, not an oversight: WPSD’s defaults and dashboard controls are built to make it hard to accidentally expose a personal hotspot to the general public. Genuinely open repeater operation is squarely a “you know what you’re doing” configuration, reached through the same expert editors used for other advanced MMDVMHost and DMRGateway changes.

As with any hand edit made through the Quick/Full Editors, changes to SelfOnly (or anything else in MMDVMHost.ini) will be overwritten the next time you click Apply Changes on the main Configuration page — the same rule that applies to hostfiles (see How WPSD Manages Hostfiles) and DMRGateway edits (see DMR Operation & Functionality). Save a Profile after making the change so you can recover it instantly if that happens.

Repeater (duplex) vs. hotspot (simplex)

Separately from access control, the Radio Mode setting on the Configuration page (Simplex/Duplex) determines whether WPSD treats your setup as a single-frequency hotspot or a two-frequency repeater/duplex node — see Initial Startup for the field-by-field breakdown, and the Glossary entries for Node and Repeater for the terminology. A duplex/repeater configuration is typically paired with Semi-Public or fully-open access, since it’s usually serving more than one operator by design — but the two settings (Duplex vs. Simplex, and Node Type/SelfOnly) are independent of each other and can be combined however your situation calls for.