The above video has nothing to do directly with this Raspberry Pi Repeater project, but this can server as an example of how a portable repeater system could be deployed. The use of a tripod type base with an antenna mounted on top and an enclosure on the side of the mast. This could house the Raspberry Pi Repeater Controller two small radios for RX and TX and a mobile duplexer.
This type of setup probably wouldn’t work well on the 2 meter band, but should be achievable on the 70 cm band. Reason being because of the separation that can be done with a small notch duplexer. Many of these duplexers are rate around a minimum of 5 MHz separation, so the 600 KHz of 2 meters wouldn’t be possible with a single antenna configuration. 2 antennas would hardly make the system portable.
Imagine being able to deploy this up on top of a building, hilltop or mountain top in a SHTF type scenario. You could even add a solar panel for battery charging.
How does a video about wifi have anything to do with the text describing a RPi repeater???
Nothing directly. I tried to describe it in the text, but it’s the setup he has in the video that could be adapted into a portable repeater system that would look similar to what’s in the video.
I’m really interested in this project. I’ve actually been working on a portable repeater design (about 10W).
Eventually I’d suggest adding SDR dongle functionality because you can eliminate the need for a sound card (pull TX audio off the RPi’s built in sound card, PTT off the GPIO). Eliminate the need of a receive radio that will end up drawing more power from the battery system.
It would also be nice to see a feature that can disable PL encoding on the transmitter when the repeater is IDing. Something I learned from commercial land.
Colin, thank you for your interest. I see you are on the mailing list. I hope to send out some updates soon. I’m currently testing svxlink. Seems to be very powerful but not accessible to the average user. If all goes well I plan to integrate it into the web admin of my project making it much easier for most to setup a repeater. Not 100% sold on SDR yet, at least for a repeater application. Svxlink I believe has some different options for when the PL tone is sent. Stay tuned.
This was almost the exact idea I was thinking for a repeater. Actually, I have some BBHN nodes and was figuring that the BBHN network could provide the Ethernet connection to control the repeater.
Yes BBHN networks has crossed my mind before. While it can certainly be done, that is an add on and outside of the direct scope of the project. With BBHN, since it cannot be encrypted, there is the security concerns with someone accessing the repeaters backend. I can’t say I’m an expert with BBHN, only going on what I’ve read. Thanks for the comment!