[App_rpt] New USB Fob attempt...
Hi All, Just trying to set up my system (finally!) after various starts and stops along the way. I have a few of the generic USB FOBS, and I have them modified and all seems to be well there... I have a system I did a fresh install of EVB on, and all seems fine there. The radio is a GE Delta on 2m. It decodes DTMF fine. I can't, for the life of me, manage to get TX Audio to work properly. If I use txtone or txvoice in 'radio tune', I either get very weird behavior (sputtering sound on my receiving HT) or a dead carrier. However, if I plug the USB keyfob into my laptop (Mac OS X) and feed audio into it and then manually ground the PTT line the GE Delta is happy to transmit that audio and it sounds great. So I can (maybe) assume that the FOB is working fine, and my wiring is correct. I have run the svn update routine, so I should have all the latest bits and bobs, and I do not see any error messages along the way, so I'm really at a loss as to what to try next. Any thoughts? Steve - N9YTY
Steven, What kernel version are you running? I've been advised there's a ztdummy timing issue with some kernels greater than 2.4.22. Steve. Steven Palm wrote:
Hi All,
Just trying to set up my system (finally!) after various starts and stops along the way. I have a few of the generic USB FOBS, and I have them modified and all seems to be well there...
I have a system I did a fresh install of EVB on, and all seems fine there.
The radio is a GE Delta on 2m.
It decodes DTMF fine.
I can't, for the life of me, manage to get TX Audio to work properly. If I use txtone or txvoice in 'radio tune', I either get very weird behavior (sputtering sound on my receiving HT) or a dead carrier.
However, if I plug the USB keyfob into my laptop (Mac OS X) and feed audio into it and then manually ground the PTT line the GE Delta is happy to transmit that audio and it sounds great.
So I can (maybe) assume that the FOB is working fine, and my wiring is correct.
I have run the svn update routine, so I should have all the latest bits and bobs, and I do not see any error messages along the way, so I'm really at a loss as to what to try next.
Any thoughts?
Steve - N9YTY _______________________________________________ App_rpt mailing list App_rpt@lists.illiana.net http://lists.illiana.net/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt
On May 24, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Stephen Rodgers wrote:
What kernel version are you running? I've been advised there's a ztdummy timing issue with some kernels greater than 2.4.22.
It's a brand-new EVB-0.011 installation, nothing custom, so it's 2.6.18-8.1.15.el5. I'll keep poking at it and see what else I can turn up. Steve
Steve: Gee, I'm beginning to think if your name isn't Steve or Jim, you're just a nobody in the app_rpt/AllStar world :)) This is to let you know that you are not alone with the audio issue. Jim WB6NIL and I have been working to add the Kenwood TM-271 to the list of equipment that is supported for remote base use. To this end, I put Debian Etch on a Dell Inspiron (2.6 GHz P4, 700 MB memory, kernel 2.6.24). After much work by Jim, we got the RB interface working correctly. However, the audio from Asterisk to iaxrpt was very garbled. Many attempts to correct it failed. Next step was to put the same distro but with a 2.6.22 kernel on a second computer (dual core AMD, 1 G memory). This time the audio to iaxrpt was just like your description...totally unintelligible blurps and pops. Jim traced this down to issues with ztdummy and was able to correct it. The final step (to date) was re-installing Debian on the Inspiron with a 2.6.18 kernel. I used zaptel-1.4.current.tar.gz from the Digium repository to generate ztdummy. This cured the audio distortion from Asterisk to iaxrpt but introduced garbled audio when going from iaxrpt to Asterisk. This is where we are today. I should be clear that this is not an iaxrpt issue. Radio tune txvoice produces a very distorted sine wave as seen off the air by a service monitor. A 'scope placed directly on the USB FOB audio output also shows a poor waveform with 'radio tune'. Jim has been nothing short of fabulous in working on this problem. If we, meaning 99.9% Jim, get a solution that produces good audio in both directions, I'll be sure to post a note here. I hope this helps. 73, David VE7MQ.
On May 24, 2008, at 12:52 PM, David Powell-Williams wrote:
This is to let you know that you are not alone with the audio issue.
Well, I guess that is encouraging. :) I'd rather be alone and be the only one with a negative experience in this case, but I guess if it helps track down and solve some edge case problems then it's good. Well, what it is doing almost without fail now is producing just a carrier on transmit although there is a high-pitched tone in there but it's not a clean tone. I put the system in parrot mode and it will key up after I drop carrier, but I get the same sort of sound from that as I do from sending *81 for example, or even a 'radio key' command on the tty9 asterisk command line. While it was in parrot mode, though, I copied the temporary parrot file before it got deleted and moved it over to my Mac and it contained my audio clear as a bell. ...So, clearly RX is working well, and PTT control is fine, but for some reason the system cannot generate any real audio, only this tone. Again, having moved the USB FOB to another computer and sending audio out to it and then grounding PTT and having the radio transmit it just fine tells me that the USB FOB is working as it should, so it must be something in the system that can't feed good audio data to the USB FOB on the outbound leg. I tried a fresh install inside VMWare on my Mac laptop just for kicks and found the same behavior as I am seeing on the other machine. Not sure where to debug from here, I've never played with asterisk before so I know very little about how the pieces fit together. Steve
Guys, First off, I'm not as familiar with chan_usbradio internals as I am with app_rpt and pciradio. You know what's a real strange twist to this? I just finished putting together an autoinstall CD using a modified version CentoS 5.1 for single channel usbradio installs and it works just fine! I just tuned up the system using my HP8920B service monitor, and the txtone function puts out a nice clean sine wave. I'm in the process of uploading an iso image for the autoinstall to http://limeylinux.org/custom-centos/51 you guys are welcome to try this iso image and see if it has the same issue or not. There is a .pdf of the install instructions uploaded to the above url you can read in advance. The image should be there in a few hours. Steve Rodgers WA6ZFT Steven Palm wrote:
On May 24, 2008, at 12:52 PM, David Powell-Williams wrote:
This is to let you know that you are not alone with the audio issue.
Well, I guess that is encouraging. :) I'd rather be alone and be the only one with a negative experience in this case, but I guess if it helps track down and solve some edge case problems then it's good.
Well, what it is doing almost without fail now is producing just a carrier on transmit although there is a high-pitched tone in there but it's not a clean tone.
I put the system in parrot mode and it will key up after I drop carrier, but I get the same sort of sound from that as I do from sending *81 for example, or even a 'radio key' command on the tty9 asterisk command line.
While it was in parrot mode, though, I copied the temporary parrot file before it got deleted and moved it over to my Mac and it contained my audio clear as a bell.
...So, clearly RX is working well, and PTT control is fine, but for some reason the system cannot generate any real audio, only this tone. Again, having moved the USB FOB to another computer and sending audio out to it and then grounding PTT and having the radio transmit it just fine tells me that the USB FOB is working as it should, so it must be something in the system that can't feed good audio data to the USB FOB on the outbound leg.
I tried a fresh install inside VMWare on my Mac laptop just for kicks and found the same behavior as I am seeing on the other machine.
Not sure where to debug from here, I've never played with asterisk before so I know very little about how the pieces fit together.
Steve _______________________________________________ App_rpt mailing list App_rpt@lists.illiana.net http://lists.illiana.net/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt
On May 24, 2008, at 8:00 PM, Stephen Rodgers wrote:
You know what's a real strange twist to this? I just finished putting together an autoinstall CD using a modified version CentoS 5.1 for single channel usbradio installs and it works just fine! I just tuned up the system using my HP8920B service monitor, and the txtone function puts out a nice clean sine wave.
Hey, I'm certainly not laying any blame, I just think that maybe I've run into one of those odd configurations that is the problem, not the core software.
I'm in the process of uploading an iso image for the autoinstall to http://limeylinux.org/custom-centos/51 you guys are welcome to try this iso image and see if it has the same issue or not.
Easy for me since I don't have anything really invested in my setup, so easy come-easy go. ;) I'll give it a shot maybe yet this weekend. Thanks! Steve
On May 24, 2008, at 8:00 PM, Stephen Rodgers wrote:
I'm in the process of uploading an iso image for the autoinstall to http://limeylinux.org/custom-centos/51 you guys are welcome to try this iso image and see if it has the same issue or not.
What size HD is required? I tried 4GB, 6GB and 8GB in a Virtual Machine and each time it tells me there is not enough space to make the partition. Steve
ks.cfg is set for a 7500MB partition: part / --fstype ext3 --size=7500 --asprimary Your 8GiB disk drive is probably barely failing. You could set this as small as 3GB or so is you use isomaster to modify the ks.cfg file in the root directory of the iso image and edit the size of the partition, Steve. Steven Palm wrote:
On May 24, 2008, at 8:00 PM, Stephen Rodgers wrote:
I'm in the process of uploading an iso image for the autoinstall to http://limeylinux.org/custom-centos/51 you guys are welcome to try this iso image and see if it has the same issue or not.
What size HD is required? I tried 4GB, 6GB and 8GB in a Virtual Machine and each time it tells me there is not enough space to make the partition.
Steve _______________________________________________ App_rpt mailing list App_rpt@lists.illiana.net http://lists.illiana.net/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt
Okay, Stephen, here is the state of my experiment so far... I didn't burn your ISO to a physical disc yet, but I tried it in my virtual machine and no change in behavior, but that isn't necessarily that meaningful as it could be an issue with the virtual machine. Back to my EVB installation... After some playing around I figured out how to use aplay to send a sound file out to the USB Fob... aplay --device=hwplug1:0,1 <filename> I took a file recorded in the parrot mode and I put the PTT line to ground while playing the file, and what do you know, it works great. I do have an internal sound card on this box, and I am wondering if something in the sound generation stuff is getting confused and sending audio out the wrong sound card? I don't have speakers on the other one so I don't know, but the USB FOB is the second card detected. I've tried to disable the internal card but haven't had much luck yet. So, the upshot so far is that Asterisk/app_rpt is able to read the receive audio, record it into a parrot file, and key the rig, but any time it transmits there is no audio. Nothing, nada, zilch, just a carrier. Playing a sound file through the USB FOB while forcing PTT on the radio does in fact transmit audio. Still thinking, but running out of things to think of trying. Steve
participants (3)
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David Powell-Williams -
Stephen Rodgers -
Steven Palm