[App_rpt-users] Replacing an IRLP node with App-rpt node

[Matt Beasant]

HI all and welcome to the new list!  Thanks to those involved in setting it
all up.
My App-rpt node has replaced an IRLP node and is working great, but I used
to have certain facilities on the IRLP node that I am attempting to
replicate on my app-rpt node and I'm struggling!

1, I had a script that unlocked the controller at a set time every day and
set the time using DTMF - now I know that ap-rpt cant generate DTMF (yet)
but I could use WAV files as the digits will always be the same and the time
the script gets called will always be the same.

So my first question is, how do you call an external shell script from
within app_rpt? Perhaps from the scheduler available in rpt.conf or some
other method of calling a script at a set time, maybe from a cron
somewhere?

Can it be done in the dialplan by dialling a specific extension or some
other cunning means?

2, I used to have the popular "playnews" package running on the IRLP node,
which downloaded certain news files and played them out at pre-set time. I
use these scripts to play out the GB2RS news files through my repeater every
week.

I have tried to replicate how this was done on the IRLP node but am having
difficulty automating this process. I have used the Asterisk command line
invoked "playback" command which works but I'm not happy with the audio
quality and I had to manually trigger the playback from the CLI.

So next I tried the WAVPLAY program that seems to be used to play out IRLP
node announcements and the quality was great but I kept getting node
timeouts from the IRLP software ( I guess ) as my APP-RPT node has no
timeout.

I thought about mpg123 as used in the IRLP playnews scripts but cannot find
a way of keying up the repeater - I'm not sure if the audio from mpg123
would come out of the USB radio interface!

Any ideas, suggestions or solutions would be most gratefully received as I
have currently run out of talent!!

Thanks,

Matt
G4RKY
Node 2250
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