Here is where I will post what I plan on doing next in HAM radio. If you happen to have some suggestions on what I should do next drop a comment below.
I have decided that blogging is not as easy as some think. To write anything new you either have to write a post or edit a "static page". Unfortunately blogger doesn't let you have it both ways. Some suggest using WordPress. The last time I tried using WordPress trying to figure out where to start was like looking at a dictionary for the definition of begin and it says "see start" so you go to start and it says "see begin". So maybe one day my next big project will be this blog.
I still want to learn Morse code, at the moment however that is on hold. Ultimately I would like to get to at least a 5 WPM copy and then buy a QRP kit as a type of reward and put that together.
Currently my big adventure with Amateur radio is getting the clubs repeater functioning like we want. It is quite an adventure to take a "plug and play" setup that someone put together and get it to play the way you want. The biggest issue for me at the moment is that I don't know whether the member who ordered the repeater build expressed exactly what we want or not. I know that he got them to set up a repeater with two link radios to be able to link where we want them and gave some description about how we wanted those links to function, but I don't know how detailed the description was and if they totally understood his description. My suspicion is that somewhere a detail or two was lost so the subtle nuances were overlooked.
To give some detail to those dedicated enough to read this here is what we have and what we are trying to do. We have a Kenwood repeater, a CAT-250 controller, a RLS-1000B switch and two link radios. We have the repeater and the switch connected to the controller as instructed by the manufacture, then have the two link radios hooked to the switch with the third port of the switch wired so that we can eventually add our IRLP node to the repeater. One of the link radios hooks to a repeater that we only want to receive from and not transmit to during normal operations and then be able to switch to TX and RX during severe weather.
The issue that I am having is that the only relevant event trigger to program off of is when the repeater COS is active, not the PTT. This means that the unmodulated carrier and courtesy tone transmit over the link radio when we don't want it to because the tone is timed from the COS drop. If there were an event for the PTT, in other words when the repeater is transmitting, then I could just turn off the link port. Some would suggest using the code that sets PORT 2 to "RECEIVE ONLY", but that also sets the second link radio to receive only when we want it to transmit to that one. It looks like the controller, in its current configuration, won't do what we want. I believe I know how to rectify this if it weren't for club politics not wanting to do any additional wiring out of fear of messing something up. That may one day change.
As it stands that is my current BIG adventure.
Possible adventures:
Beagle Bone Black and IRLP: I have the Raspberry Pi with IRLP but I wonder if the Beagle Bone Black could be used in like manner. The trouble is IRLP seems pretty tight lipped about how it all works and you have to buy the CD. First hurdle is that I don't have a Beagle Bone Black, just looking at what is already out there first.
Arduino DTMF and a homemade program to control the repeater: The idea I had for this would be to create a program that took the DTMF codes and put them behind the scenes and made a user interface where you can select the options and the program would spit out the codes. This in turn would send the characters in a string over the COM port to the Arduino to generate the DTMF sounds. This could be potentially plugged into any radio mic input to automate the process.
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