[App_rpt] Radio Interface Question

[Steve Rodgers]

James,

See my responses below....

On Thursday 02 March 2006 15:41, James Harfield wrote:
> Sorry for the delay, my list subscrption settings may be wrong.  I was
> not receiving the digest or any other e-mails to reply to, or know that
>
> anyone had responded. . .  moving on:
> > That assumption isn't correct. It is E&M for zaptel configuration only
>
> (not in
>
> > hardware). The card interface 4 wire audio even though only a single
>
> Zap
>
> > channel is specified.  In zaptel.conf you should specify:
> >
> > e&m = 1
> > ....
> >
> > And in zapata.conf you should specify:
> >
> > signalling=em_txrx
> > channel = 1
> > ....
> >
> > And in rpt.conf you should specify only ONE zap channel:
> >
> > [100]                          ; Name of First Repeater
> >
> > rxchannel = Zap/1                      ; Rx audio/signalling channel
> > ...
>
> Thank you Steve.  We do have all of that setup or as you suggested.
> Went back and double checked after reading your post just to make sure.
>
> > Please elaborate on how you are trying to connect. When do you get the
>
> "Unable
>
> > to create channel Zap" error? Was it when you tried to run Asterisk
>
> with
>
> > app_rpt compiled in?
>
> I'll try to ASCII out how we're connecting to our radio:
>
> Radio                  PCI
> Side                    Card
>
> Ext Spkr       =>    1 RXA
> CVC Sense    =>    2 COR
> --not used--  =>    3 UIOA
> --not used--  =>    4 Subtone
> PTT             =>    5 PTT
> --not used--  =>    6 UIOB
> Ext Mic        =>     7 TXA
> RF Ground    =>     8 GND

A couple of things to note here:

Tying speaker audio to RXA is not the preferred method. RXA should be tied to 
the receiver's discriminator output, or to a point where the audio levels are 
less than a couple of volts peak. 

Pin 8 should be tied to DC ground. If that is the same as RF ground, that's 
fine.

Microphone inputs tend to be very sensitive. You might need to add some 
attenuation resistors to the microphone input to knock the audio level from 
the card down so that you can easily adjust the level. If there is a line 
level input to your transmitter you'd be better off using that.

>
> With that attached, just through an RJ-45 cable, we load up Asterisk.
> Then after connecting to Asterisk via a Softphone we try to dial the
> radio.  Our extensions.conf file looks like this for dialing the Zap
> channel:
>
> exten => 205,1,Dial(Zap/1/1999)

Hmmmmm. The idea here is not to talk to the Zap channels directly. Instead of 
trying to talk to the zap radio channel directly, try something like this 
instead:

exten => 205,1,Rpt,1999|D

When your caller calls extension 205, the transmitter should key, and the 
caller's audio should be heard on a receiver tuned to the transmitter's 
frequency. This is what we call dumb phone control mode. There are other 
modes you can use and they are documented in app_rpt.c.

Also me sure that app_rpt.so is loaded and running in asterisk before trying 
any of the above. Use the following asterisk CLI example to determine if 
app_rpt.so is loaded.

linuxserver2*CLI> show modules like app_rpt
Module                         Description                              Use
app_rpt.so                     Radio Repeater / Remote Base  version 0. 0
1 modules loaded


Steve Rodgers, WA6ZFT
QRV Communications