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

[Ramesh Dhami (VA3UV)]

Hi Matt;

Haven't heard from you in a while! - see my response below...

Cheers,

Ramesh.

Matt Beasant wrote:

> 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? 

<-- You can simply add a cron entry into root's crons (crontab -e will
get you into edit mode, add a new cron entry, which you can then play
out your pre-recorded DTMF file; note that the file must be a ulaw file.
  This is probably the easiest method.  I have used this to play out an
ID announcement - very simple and effective.

FYI, you can also call a script from the dialplan as follows:

exten => 96,n,System(/scripts/name_of_script)

[Credit to Don, W9DRR for showing me this some time back].  This example 
requires your script to be in the /etc/asterisk/scripts folder - but you 
can specify any path as appropriate.


> 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. 

<-- As above, the file needs to be in ulaw format... not sure what
format you're using.  I use Cepstral to build a ulaw audio file from a
WX text file, then play the ulaw file from the dialplan, the audio
quality is great!

You could try using sox to convert your (possibly) non-ulaw file to ulaw.

> 
> 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.

<-- Sounds like the file is indeed a wav file - try using sox to convert
it to a ulaw file and try using rpt's localplay function.  FYI, man sox
will provide you with the info on sox.