Project - Listening to DMR MotoTRBO Connect Plus with TYT-MD2017 Ham Radio HT

After I successfully was able to listen to DMR MotoTRBO Connect Plus with SDR dongles and DSD (digital speech decoder) software on a laptop, I was inspired to find a way to be able to listen to the system with a more portable device.  Using a laptop, 2 SDR dongles, etc was a bit messy.  I though many times since I got my TYT-MD2017 DMR HT that there should be a way listen to this with that.  I couldn't find any real information about how to do it.  So I just started trying what I knew.

The first thing I realized is that the DMR MotoTRBO Connect Plus systems are trunked.  This means they use a control channel to automatically assign frequency channels as needed.  The TYT-MD2017 ham radio HT does not have this capability.  However the control channel is used to set the frequency but it does not change while a radio is transmitting.  So I figured out that I could program in all of the talk channel frequencies into the HT, define the talk groups I knew, and then put this pool of frequencies into a "scan list".  Then by activating the HT's scan function it would scan all of the voice channels and stop when it hears traffic.  This works great. It will stop when there is traffic and it will even display the TG number and description on the display.  When the traffic stops, it will continue scanning. 

Overall this works great and it gives me a super portable way to "scan" my local Sheriff/PD/Fire/EMS DMR MotoTRBO Connect Plus system without an expensive radio or scanner and without needing a messy PC setup with SDRs and many applications.  The only draw back is that it stops on the first traffic it hears.  So you could technically miss out on parts of things.  If another talk channel has traffic between transmissions.  But it really hasn't been an issue for a casual listener like me.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone else!