[App_rpt-users] Some newbie questions

[Nils Prause]

Hi to everyone,

I'm trying to set up two nodes here in Germany with a static connection and
the ability to connect to Allstar and EchoLink. I'm already familiar with
Asterisk as professional pbx but new to app_rpt. Right now I have some
issues with the configuration and hope that I can get help on this list.
I've already read a lot of messages in the archive and also took a look at
the source code but - as Bono said - I still haven't found what I'm looking
for. :-) 

1. I bought a URI board from DMK, assembled the cable and connected it to
two Motorola GM 900 transceivers (1x rx, 1x tx). As described in the
Motorola schematics I used pin 24 on rx and 25 on tx to get flat audio and
give full audio to tx. If I look for the signals coming from the rx on a
spectrum analyzer I can see flat audio with a potential of about 500 MV. But
as I start the analyzing procedure with "radio tune rxnoise" I always get
the error message that the audio is "too loose". 
"radio tune rxvoice" seems to work correctly but detecting of CTCSS tones as
described on the website also fails without any additional error messages. 

I adjusted the squelch manually to a value of about 800 but I'm not sure if
this is the right direction to go. Is anyone else using Motorola GM
transceivers and can report the same issues? 
I think that 500 MV should be enough for an URI board. Am I wrong with that?

2. My test repeater has an audio delay of about 200 ms. Some guys told me
that this is much longer than it seems to be on their systems. So, is there
a way to reduce or manipulate the delay produced by dsp? Which parameters
can affect this? 
app_rpt runs under Debian on a Core2 Duo machine with 4Gig of memory and a
fast SATA hdd.

3. Most of repeaters in Germany are opened using 1750 Hz burst tone. To
activate this I set the desired parameters in rpt.conf as described on the
website <http://app-rpt.qrvc.com/node/156>.

----- Tearline begin
rxburstfreq=1750
rxbursttime=500
rxburstthreshold=10
----- Tearline end

I also played around with the values but every time I activate
rxburstfreq=1750 the repeater just doesn't do anything.
If I enable debugging I can see ptt keying in the CLI but every time I press
the 1750 call tone the CLI shows exactly nothing. On the spectrum I can see
the 1750 hz tone very well so I know that there is a strength signal on the
input.     
 
On the archive I saw that this error was already reported some weeks ago but
it seems that no one did have a solution for it. I'm not sure what to do now
because without this feature the whole software is just useless for me. :-(


4. In Germany nearly 90% or more of the repeaters work like the following
scheme:
- Repeater is opened using 1750 Hz burst tone.
- When the repeater opens it first plays its id (regardless of its last id).

- Now the user makes his call. After the user releases ptt the repeater
stays open for a while (maybe 20 or 30 seconds).
- At the moment the repeater opens a timer starts. If this timer exceeds the
id is played again (beaconing). Usually this happens every 10 minutes (the
timer is set to 600 seconds).
- If the qso ends before the timer has exceeded the repeater closes and
that's it.
- Some operators like to have an id every 10 minutes regardless if the
repeater is open or not. But most of them only want to have an id played if
the repeater is still open.
- Some repeaters have the ability to be opened using ptt only
(carrier-detect) some seconds after the repeater has been used. For example,
if the repeater closes a timer of 30 seconds starts. If the user presses the
ptt within these 30 seconds the repeater opens again (usually without
playing his id). If the timer exceeds and no one had pressed the ptt the
repeater goes back to "normal operation mode" and reacts only on 1750 burst
tone as described above.

Setting the id timer to 10 minutes is no big deal and setting the hang timer
to 30 seconds is also done easily. But I can't see how to be sure that the
id is played every time the repeater opens?

If not implemented yet, this could be a good moment to test out the
facilities of Mantis. :-)


Thanks for any help in advance.



--
73s, Nils, DO6NP