March 2016 - App_rpt-users - lists.keekles.org

pciradio to Quantar
by Bryan Fields 25 Mar '16

25 Mar '16

I revised my interface diagram, and added a poorly drawn schematic. http://keekles.org/~w9cr/Quantar%20to%20Quad%20PCI%20card.pdf I have this in operation now with two systems and a third coming online. With the proper configuration you can setup the station for in-cabinet repeat of P25 and then analog via the repeater controller. 73's -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice 727-214-2508 - Fax http://bryanfields.net

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Santiago Board
by Henry Hamblin 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

I am looking for a Santiago Board. Either a blank board only, or a completed working board. If you have either, and wish to sell, please e-mail. Thanks, Henry WB4IVB

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Outgoing connections to nodes.allstarlink.org
by Toussaint OTTAVI 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

Hi, I'm playing around with DIAL, for an autonomous repeater system for our island. I have a central "hub", and some remote repeaters. It's not intended to be connected (for now) with the Allstar network. Anyway, I can notice permanent attempts to connect to "nodes1.allstarlink.org" (A DNS lookup, followed by HTTP connections). I thought I removed all references to Allstar network in my config files. It seems I missed something ;-) How can I disable this ? 73 de TK1BI

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Scheduler / COP
by Kevin Babich 24 Mar '16

24 Mar '16

All, I am endeavoring to create a schedule which performs the following functions: 1. Change courtesy tone 2. Send 2-Tone Sequence (2x) 3. Shorten hang time 4. Change recorded voice announcement 5. Change ID to Morse I would like to call this either manually by DTMF or via Scheduler… has anyone successfully done this? This is a pretty standard feature in most modern repeater controllers, however, since the configuration file needs to be changed in order to accomplish the same, I am uncertain how to make this happen… Thoughts anyone?? Kindest Regards, Kevin Babich | N9IAA Valparaiso, IN 46383 Mobile: 219.406.9707 Cessna 421 Cesssna Conquest I/II Beechcraft King Air 90/200 “…It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat...” -Theodore Roosevelt

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phone patch audio
by Greg 23 Mar '16

23 Mar '16

I have very low phone patch audio when I access via sip and use *99 to PTT. Audio the other way is fine. Seems like it changed recently.. Where do I find tuning settings for this? Thanks Greg

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cat 200b controller
by Wayne 22 Mar '16

22 Mar '16

HI All, Anyone out there has done an interface between the cat 200b controller and DMK URI. Thanks Wayne --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus

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Raspberry Pi3
by Kevin Custer 22 Mar '16

22 Mar '16

A friend of mine asked me to help him with replacing two of his older Dell PC installations with Raspberry Pi 2's. I've ordered several Raspberry Pi2's in the past from Amazon. When I ordered his two, I used the "Reorder" button from a previous Pi2 order. When they arrived, they were the latest model Pi3. <sigh> Anyway - has anyone here tried installing the DIAL image for the Pi2 on a Pi3, and if so, what were your results? I've already asked the developers and the answer is - "it should work". I'm going to try it, but I wondered if anyone had already and what they experienced. Thanks, Kevin Custer - W3KKC

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usbradio.conf
by Kevin Babich 21 Mar '16

21 Mar '16

All, When after adding an EEPROM to the RIM, does the usb stanza require eprom = 1 or 0 to enable EEPROM? Kindest Regards, Kevin Babich | N9IAA Valparaiso, IN 46383 Mobile: 219.406.9707 Cessna 421 Cesssna Conquest I/II Beechcraft King Air 90/200 “…It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat...” -Theodore Roosevelt

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RTCM and BBB or RAS PI
by Fran 20 Mar '16

20 Mar '16

Hello, Im currently using a BBB as an Allstar node and would like to have a friends RTCM unit connect to me, which files do I need to modify/add to get him connected. Thx FrankKB2AYS

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RTCM and Quantar Interfacing
by Brett Woollum 18 Mar '16

18 Mar '16

Hi Everyone! I wanted to share my experiencing setting up DIAL with RTCM's in hopes it will help the next person who searches for similar information. I have a Motorola Quantar (Quantro technically) repeater that has been set up for in-cabinet repeat. We've been having issues with handhelds not being able to talk into the system very well, especially in certain areas such as inside buildings. Our solution to this is to add remote voting receivers and feed them back to the repeater for transmission. I thought about doing it the traditional way using RF links and a central voter, but found app_rpt and RTCM's to be a more flexible solution. Plus, we already have an IP network to use as the transport between sites. At the moment I have an RTCM connected to the Quantar's 50-pin telco connector. The Quantar has a 4-wire wireline board installed, though I've configured the Quantar for an enhanced 8-wire card using the drop-down option in the software. We have one remote RTCM for testing. This is currently connected to a Motorola CDM1250 which is configured for receive-only. Some things I learned that I would like to share: Use the right pins on the Quantar! My first mistake was connecting the RTCM's audio to pins 1 and 2 on the 50-pin telco connector, thinking I would just go into the software and configure the repeater to put audio on those pins. Of course this didn't work. Use pins 5 and 30 on the 50-pin connector for your RTCM audio! The other pins for COR/PL and TX were easy (don't forget to add the wildcard entries as necessary to make these work!). Set up a VoIP Phone Setting up a remote SIP phone to listen in is a must! I would have continued to struggle if I hadn't set up a VoIP phone reverse-autopatch style. It was super easy using the instructions found in another thread on this list. Being able to call in and listen directly to the server was immensely helpful in diagnosing issues. I was able to figure out if the audio problems were on the receive or transmit side. I have a physical VoIP phone and a iPhone VoIP phone app connected. Recording is a must! I've configured app_rpt to record sound files on the server's hard drive. This allows me to re-play audio files and hear what the audio sounded like from the server's perspective. Again, this has been extremely helpful in allowing me to diagnose where in the system audio problems are coming from. A recent example of this was choppy transmit audio. I was able to go back and listen to the audio files, which sounded fine. This helped me narrow down on the problem, which turned out to be an issue between the server and the RTCM at the transmitter site (lack of QoS on a network link feeding the RTCM at the transmitter site). Crappy Transmit Audio I ran into an issue where the repeated audio sounded really bassy, muffled, and not very understandable. Compared to a typical simplex radio-to-radio transmission, the audio through the repeater (RTCM and Dial) was unacceptable. What I discovered was that the RTCM has an internal pre-emphasis function that was disabled. See, I had intentionally disabled "txctsss" and "txctcsslevel" in voter.conf because I didn't want the RTCM transmitting CTCSS (the Quantar was doing that for me already). I ultimately found a post online that said enabling txctcss = some valid tone (114.8 in our case) and setting txctcsslevel = 0 would turn on the pre-emphasis function in the RTCM without transmitting CTCSS tones. I did, and it worked like a charm! Audio now had more treble and was less bassy/muffled. So, future RTCM users, be sure not to comment out txctcss and txctcsslevel in voter.conf! Just enable and set the level to 0. You'll thank me later. Network Quality Your IP Network quality is important here. In our case I had to manually ensure we had a rule in our routers to prioritize traffic on UDP port 667 so that RTCM audio was given priority over other traffic. I recommend the same. RX/TX Buffers are NOT Both Millisecond Values I assumed an RX buffer (in voter.conf) of 120ms would be equivalent of a TX buffer (in the RTCM) of 120ms. Even though I followed the directions and set the buffers correctly, I only later realized the TX buffer was the number of 125 microsecond intervals, where the RX buffer is in milliseconds. I ended with an RX buffer of 160ms and TX buffer of 900 (high just to be safe). Don't Disable COR on the RTCM At one point I tried to disable COR on the RTCM since I was feeding it a PL signal from the Quantar. While it worked, it seemed to have disabled the RTCM's ability to measure RSSI, and therefore always reported a full 255 RSSI. Not good when trying to vote. Hopefully future RTCM's will have softpots for adjustments instead of physical adjustment screws. This would be great because the pots could be adjusted remotely without a trip to the remote site. So far the system seems to be working well! I need to make some minor adjustments to audio and squelch levels, but other than that everything is working. I'll probably end up picking up another 1-3 RTCM's and setting them up at remote sites to enhance our coverage even further. I hope someone finds this useful down the road! PS: For those of you interested in MDC1200, check out my MDC1200 paging system which works through this Dial/RTCM/Quantar system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QQa4krAxQI Brett Woollum

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