January 2019 - App_rpt-users - lists.keekles.org

After downloading?
by Jim Hertel 07 Jan '19

07 Jan '19

Ok all you guru's, I downloaded the current ASL.img program, installed it and ran it, populated the first time user setup routine. I hope I got it right. I currently can't connect to a station or node like Larry KR6AZ node 46822. Are there any Elmer's out there that can help in Laymans terms too? some of this stuff is way over my head at times. I bet I have to open a Port up, which ones? Also, info I have the Pi3 as the computer. Also running a RIM-RC210/RLC to the RC210 repeater controller. If you can please try my node 47379 to see if it works from your end. Is there a decent manual for the ASL version of Allstar? I may have missed it, so tell me where. I did download the HAMVIOP version manual but that was confusing and didn't jive with ASL's to much so i didn't venture there too much. I also didn't find a Apache http//: program in there while Putty'ing around, is there one? By the way I also have IRLP 7966 that works great on a pi...and the echolink too.. By the way thanks in advance. Jim n6kmr _________________________________________ Modoc County Emergency Group Repeaters 145.490, 147.075, 147.045, 444.250 PL 100 Allstar 47397 IRLP 7966 Echolink 51691

4 3

Voice control options
by William Franzin 07 Jan '19

07 Jan '19

Good morning, We're also keen AllStarLink/app_rpt users/experimenters here in Winnipeg and Dan mentioned a discussion about the work I did on here, so thought I'd fill in the blanks. Also joined this list. I started with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa and really just wanted to control devices using voice, the "what's the weather" was just an added bonus, but all that requires internet. I also liked the speed of running the assistant code in real-time, as you speak that's actually a stream to Google/Amazon so the results you get are immediate vs rec/upload/download/play. For the majority of ham radio actual "needs" in voice control the Picovoice Rhino project speech-to-intent would do a great job. If you haven't check it out: https://github.com/Picovoice Also watch their video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WadKhfLyqTQ which I think is exactly what we'd want from a ham radio setup. Wakework "Hey Repeater" "Turn on ..". All of that great capability runs entirely on the device/server/reflector, no internet or web service call to Google/Amazon is needed. And it produces this simple output too: { "type": "espresso", "size": "small", "numberOfShots": "2", "sugar": "a lot", "milk": "some" } We should do this, my 2010 Ford Escape has had Microsoft Sync voice control and it's nothing new. Everything has voice control these days, and it actually works really well now. The only challenge in ham is we need to come up with some standard commands so if you're visiting here you know the repeater has this capability and how to work it. If anything I'm just glad the videos I posted a while back got this topic going again. Certainly not the first person to poke around with voice - it's just really easy now to implement this. Thanks to all the folks working on AllStarLink/app_rpt too. I just built a firmware image with AllStarLink for a Sierra Radio Systems CommServer board and it was apt-get-easy --let-me-drink-my-coffee-while-the-hard-work-gets-done ;) Thanks, William VE4VR

4 7

Services on the New Portal Site
by Tim Sawyer 06 Jan '19

06 Jan '19

I've pointed the Register link on allstarlink.org to the new portal, web-tpa.allstarlink.org (our future portal site). That us brings to four allstarlink.org services that point to web-tpa.allstarlink.org: - New user registration - Password reset - Callsign change - Nodes List At this point web-tpa.allstarlink.org has every service it needs to replace allstarlink.org. The above are just the services that have redirected links. Additionally I'll repoint the entire portal menu soon to have users pound on that before the migration. We don't have a date for the allstarlink.org migration yet, but it will be soon. Stay tuned. -- Tim WD6AWP

7 18

AI to control an ASL system principe and question on ASL
by Pierre Martel 06 Jan '19

06 Jan '19

Hi to every one. After watching how VE4VR controled an IRLP node I started to wonder how could this be done on ASL. I dont want to steal the fame to this brilliant gentleman.. I am just damn curious how he did it and if it is done on ASL, preventing unwanted stuff to happen.. As they said there is more then a one way to skin a cat. here is my version.. I attached an image on how this could be done. But I also have some question... [image: AI setup.png] As you can see I think that using the Chan_USRP driver to the Analog Bridge from the DVSwitch project there is a way to talk back an forth to the AI (PIcovoice project) This would be a local node (1999) to the server and another node (28XXX) connected to the server by USBRadio or Simple USB or Chan_Voter would be the radio interface to the airwaves. Now all this is nice and no one on the network links will say the wake work for the local repeater and all is well. NOT. It will happen that remote user will use the wake word and the AI will be all over the place. NOT GOOD. So beside using maybe another ctcss tone to enable the AI listening audio stream, wich could be a good idea as only people in the know would be able to trig the AI, is there another way differentiate the audio stream from a local one to a network one.. I imagine that we could use a small script to turn on or of muting on the audio stream to the AI? Dont start trowing flames!! It is just for discussion and having fun waiting for the code to be released by William.. ( well I hope he will do it ;-) ) It is a damn fun time to be in ham radio! Pierre VE2PF

2 1

SIRI or Google assitant like repeater controler
by Pierre Martel 05 Jan '19

05 Jan '19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D5rgFGLLmY A canadian ham came with a solution to use a voice assitant to control his IRLP controler.. This is very fun to watch.. Worder if it would be possible to install on an allstar node and add voice control. I have a 900 mhz project comming on and most of the radio we have dont have dtmf mic. This would be like removing the dtmf obligation to operate the repeater Pierre VE2PF

2 2

CM119 USB interface
by Brian G 05 Jan '19

05 Jan '19

Hi all, Merry Christmas My local club is working on setting up a few ASL nodes, and I've been busy modifying some CM119 based USB sound cards to control the radios. I'm using this card/dongle: https://www.amazon.ca/Syba-SD-CM-UAUD-Adapter-C-Media-Chipset/dp/B001MSS6CS I've done several so far and have a few nodes working great with CTCSS carrier detect. One issue I'm consistently running into, is when setting the "RX Squelch Level" in the radio-tune-menu, it detects the current RX signal strength as 999. This results in the inability to use anything other than CTCSS for carrier detect. I can make plain old VOX work too, but it results in considerable (2 sec+) hang time. Using DSP carrier detect won't work because it's impossible to set the squelch high enough (max value 999). It always thinks there's a signal present when there isn't. This happens regardless of whether there's a radio connected to the dongle or not. As a matter of fact it happens even when plugging in an unmodified dongle right out of the package. I need it to work with no CTCSS. VOX would be fine if it wasn't for the hang time, but would rather use the DSP option in usbradio.conf. I assume it's just the nature of the beast, and if I want it done properly I need an adapter and radio capable of COS. But maybe someone knows if there's something that can be done or not? Anyone have any insight on how to either eliminate the VOX hang time, or eliminate that "invisible" signal? I might be overlooking something. Thanks for reading! -- Brian - VA3DXV

8 26

Re: [App_rpt-users] Remote Base Questions
by Rachel Olivero 05 Jan '19

05 Jan '19

All, I'm revisiting this in case anyone else runs into the trouble. (Thanks to Mike for earlier troubleshooting help.) The final result was a couple settings in rpt.conf ended up needing to be tweaked: duplex=0 linktolink=yes This resulted in the behavior I was looking for. Now, if I could figure out why the transmit audio is so low... 73, Rachel AD9O On Sat, Jan 5, 2019, at 15:30, Rachel Olivero wrote: > > > On Sat, Sep 1, 2018, at 20:12, Rachel Olivero wrote: >> Good evening all: >> >> I presently have my TM-D700 connected to a Raspberry Pi with a URI and configured as a remote base. I'm using iaxRpt to control/use it. >> >> I'm noticing that if there is received audio and I transmit, everything works fine. When I unkey, I get the repeater audio immediately back over iaxRpt. However, if I transmit to a repeater that has had no carrier previously, I don't hear any returned audio. I've stood next to the radio and verified that I am keying the repeater. Tonight, a station responded and I got no audio until the carrier dropped and a new signal was detected. I'm not sure if this is a D700 issue, a URI issue, or an app_rpt issue. I'm open to any suggestions. >> >> One other question, I defined an archivedir in rpt.conf, but I don't see audio files in the directory. I see the promised text file, but no audio. Did I miss a step? >> >> Thanks, >> Rachel AD9O

1 0

Asterisk 1538 update to 1.01
by DuaneVT 05 Jan '19

05 Jan '19

I have heard that I need to backup /etc/asterisk, run the update, and restore /etc/asterisk. Is this restoring by copying the backed-up /etc/asterisk over the top of the updated /etc/asterisk? While it probably seems trivial to you veterans, some of us are not that comfortable with Linux. I would rather ask than spend hours at a remote site trying to figure out bad-result ripples. Thanks, Duane KA1LM 42996

4 3

A few addons for ASL speech
by Brian G 02 Jan '19

02 Jan '19

Not sure if I can post this here or not. Apologies in advance if it's not of interest to anyone. I wrote a few python programs that convert useful text data from the internet into speech for playback on ASL. Probably only useful if you're in Canada (except the last one). The first one is wx.py which retrieves weather forecasts and current conditions from environment Canada; https://github.com/va3dxv/wx.py The second one is ontario511.py which grabs current road conditions from ontario511. This will require a bit of minor tweaking to an "if statement" to get it to grab your preferred roads/highways; https://github.com/va3dxv/ontario511.py The last one, bands.py fetches the current solar and estimated band conditions from hamqsl.com. HF only at the moment but I'll be working on adding the 6M/VHF estimations soon; https://github.com/va3dxv/bands.py These will all require an API key to api.voicerss.org (free for up to 350 requests a day). They also require your system has LAME and SOX installed for the audio conversion, as well as a couple of python modules. Add the scripts to the system/root crontab to grab the data and generate the audio once an hour or so, that way the sound file is always relatively fresh and can be played immediately with a DTMF command. Alternatively you can schedule the playback on your repeater at specific times. I'm not a programmer by any means, and pretty new to python, so I'm sure this can be done in a more elegant way... but this is what I came up with and I thought I'd share. Any comments, bugs or questions, please let me know. :) Thanks and Happy New Year

1 0