[Gene, N7ARO]

Good afternoon,

I just installed Open Repeater on a Pi 2 this morning and started messing around with it.

I have a generic USB sound card that has a volume control on it, but it does not seem to do anything.

Using head phones, the ID audio is very weak. I am going through an EZ Digi to the Mic input of a UV-5R set up for vox. I have verified the cabling many times.

The audio seems so low that it is not tripping the vox.

I searched the internet for adjusting the audio level for amixer, but nothing is working. It either tells me to choose something to set or that it has no idea what ‘Master’,0 is.

If anyone knows the proper syntax for adjusting the volume using amixer, I would really appreciate it. Or, if there are better ways of doing it, that would be welcome too.

Gene
N7ARO

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Greetings Gene,
Thanks for trying out the beta of the project. There are a couple different models of the easy digi. You shouldn’t be using one that relies on using the vox within the radio. It is too unreliable as audio will go up and down and there will be breaks in between words with voice communication. VOX is more geared towards digital modes like PSK where you have a consistently peaking signal to keep it open. You should be using an Easy Digi that has an optocoupler on the board and wired up to a GPIO as shown here: https://openrepeater.com/getting-started/hardware.

If yours doesn’t have one, you can simply build an external circuit for the PTT control. The schematics for the easy digits are available online and you can just build that part of the circuit and use what you have for audio isolation. You might want to do that and include an optocoupler for COS control as well.

As for the audio level, it should be fairly low as it will need to be around mic level which is about 1000x less than line level. You don’t want to overdrive the mic circuit on the transmitter. You can try to run it into a powered speaker for testing purposes.

On a side note, we are working on the next beta, so hope to have some things smoothed out in that. Hope this helps.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

OpenRepeater is offered free of charge. Find out how you can support us.

[Gene, N7ARO]

Aaron,

Thanks for the info. I guess you are right about the audio level. Don’t want to burn up the input of the radio.

I am unsure if the Easy Digi I grabbed has the optocoupler in it or not. If not, I have one that does. I did see the schematic posted in the hardware section that shows where the wires connect between the Pi and the Easy Digi.

I will take another stab at it (the proper way) and report.

Before I got it working this morning, I had to set the TX and RX audio devices to 0 instead of 1.

Thank you for the prompt response.

73’s
Gene
N7ARO

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Not a problem. Yes the audio devices under ports is something I am working on in the next beta. It seems to vary from device to device and the configuration is confusing some. I am working on a background process that detects the connected devices and presents them in a dropdown menu for easy selection. We are working to try to make things more seamless. Thanks and good luck.

73,
Aaron
N3MBH

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

OpenRepeater is offered free of charge. Find out how you can support us.

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