[Jeffrey, WB9OUF]

I am wiring my DB-9 interface cable, could someone explain to me COS vs. CTCSS INPUT from RX radio which of those signals keys the PTT of the repeater on that port (1 or 2)?

I would like the repeater in CTCSS only access, but the is nothing on the UI to offer a selection between CTCSS or Carrier access.

Secondly, could someone at ICS enlighten me, the CTCSS and COS switches, which way is Active/HI vs. Active/LOW on either port?

Lastly, again since at no point on the UI have we selected CTCSS or Carrier what does Pin 1–CTCSS Encode output signal to the transmitter?

Thank you very much for your time, and patience—I think I’m much better at heart surgery than electronics–most days that is!!

sincerely

Jeff-WB9OUF

[Dan, KG7PAR]

Hi Jeff,

SVXLINK software doesn’t support CTCSS via GPIO yet so that is why the UI doesn’t have mention of it. We designed the board to be universal so it would work with any implementation, including the ones that want both COS and CTCSS either seperated or logical “AND” together.

For the time being though, you will have to let your RX radio handle the CTCSS decoding and use the COS input to the software, or you can get down into the svxlink config files and have svxlink decode the tones from the receiver audio.

There has been feature requests open for years to add the GPIO based CTCSS but no-one has stepped up to develop the code base for that feature.

active high/active low COS switches, if you move the switch towards the 40 pin header, they are in active low position. You can confirm this by shorting pin 7 (COS) to pin 8 (GND) on the DB9 with tweezers, paperclip/etc. If your switches are in the active low mode, you will see the LED turn on at the rear of the board.

Again with the intent to fully feature the board, we added the CTCSS encode signal to someday allow the controller to tell certain radios if they should add the ctcss or not during certain transmissions. This again is currently an unsupported feature within the svxlink software, but assuming you had to have it, you could manually drive it with python script that monitors the logs or something else. You could use it as a very strong pull to ground General Purpose Output pin if so desired for something like driving a transmitter fan relay or such.

Dan, ICS

[Jeffrey, WB9OUF]

Thank you Dan,

Briefly, I have the PI 2X/Raspberry Pi3b configuration
1) If I desire CTCSS access only which input takes priority keying the PTT COS or CTCSS in?
2) Running the controller without radios attached the “short ID goes off every 9 minutes (which was set in the initial setup)
3) What do the LED’s on the corner of the board indicate?
4) On the “interface” tab on the UI under “PORT SETTINGS” (both 1 and 2)
EXTRA Settings”
RX Control Mode = COS
RX Active GIPO State = Active Low
TX Active GIPO State = Active HI
Do I change those to match the PI 2X switches or leave them alone and configure the switches to match my radio?
Thank you very much for your time and patience with my novice questions:)

Jeff-WB9OUF

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Jeff,
Glad to see that Dan was able to answer some of your questions. There is a board preset feature both in the initial wizard as well as at the bottom of the interface page. You can simply select the Pi Repeater 2x (ver 3.1+) and load the preset. What this will do is copy all the information from a database of presets into the port settings above. This include port labels, GPIO values and Active High/Low settings. It will also set the alsamixer settings in linux for you so that should be one less thing for your to worry about. If you don’t need the 2nd port on the 2X you can simply remove it and update the ports.

Also be aware that the active high/low settings under the gear icon for each port you shouldn’t have to worry about. Those are only between the 2X board and the pie and are different than the high low settings on the board that affect the relationship between the board and the 2x…if that makes sense. Thought that could be an area of confusion.

To Answer your questions:
1) If I desire CTCSS access only which input takes priority keying the PTT COS or CTCSS in?
Use the COS pin on the DB9 as the CTCSS pin currently does nothing (it’s for the future). Set your PL settings in your receive radio.

2) Running the controller without radios attached the “short ID goes off every 9 minutes (which was set in the initial setup)
Not sure if there is a question here or not but that sounds normal. In the upcoming 2.2.0 version we will be adding support for an SVXLink function that will only send the short ID if the repeater is currently active. This will be selectable and will not affect the long ID.

3) What do the LED’s on the corner of the board indicate?
I believe ICS has notations of these in their documentation on the board. There should be six LEDS, three for each port. For each port there is a PTT LED, COS LED, and a CTCSS LED (currently not used).

4) On the “interface” tab on the UI under “PORT SETTINGS” (both 1 and 2)
EXTRA Settings”
RX Control Mode = COS
RX Active GIPO State = Active Low
TX Active GIPO State = Active HI
Do I change those to match the PI 2X switches or leave them alone and configure the switches to match my radio?
–See my explanation above for more detail, but this looks correct. You should only need to worry the switches on the 2X board as that is what affects the state between the interface and the radios.

Hope that is of help.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

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[Jeffrey, WB9OUF]

Thank you Aaron,

Thank you for your detailed answers, just a few more LOL:)

1) How is the Audio from Ports 1 & 2 routed? Both kept separate, or Mixed? Can it be modified with the UI in that I don’t know coding…LOL
2) COS from port 1 keys PTT 1 and PTT 2, where as Port 2 keys only PTT 1, I ask because I would like to add a remote base to port 2 at some point, and that situation would be ideal
3) Referencing item #2 above, is there a way (by DTMF) to disable port 2 PTT thus shutting off the remote base function.
4) How far along is the Transmitter based Fan timer module? It would be a great option.

I say this having no idea how to write code, and I do appreciate very much, those who can and do.

Thank you very much,

Jeff- WB9OUF

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Jeff,
Here is a reply to your addition questions:

1) How is the Audio from Ports 1 & 2 routed? Both kept separate, or Mixed? Can it be modified with the UI in that I don’t know coding…LOL
The audio is routed via software. In it’s standard configuration port 1 is a duplex repeater port and any additional ports are simplex link ports that are tied into the repeater logic.There is currently one quick & easy simplex node option available from the drop down. That will treat each port as a separate simplex logic, but it is ready indented to use use one port for the purposes of a simplex node.

2) COS from port 1 keys PTT 1 and PTT 2, where as Port 2 keys only PTT 1, I ask because I would like to add a remote base to port 2 at some point, and that situation would be ideal
The reason you are seeing this behavior is a carry over from my answer above. Port 1 is duplex and port 2 is simplex link. COS on port 2 will key PTT1, but you won’t set PTT2 key because port 2 is simplex.

3) Referencing item #2 above, is there a way (by DTMF) to disable port 2 PTT thus shutting off the remote base function.
If you are not using port 2 right now you can simply delete it and you won’t see the extra PTT keying up as it won’t build it into the config

4) How far along is the Transmitter based Fan timer module? It would be a great option.
I believe Dan & I pretty much has this usable. It won’t trigger the fan as quickly as we’d like as we are waiting form some updates to be pushed into a future release of SVXLink that will allow faster timing. But it should kick on and off in under a minute.

There are some ways with some “hacking” to make different logic setups that won’t get overwritten. You’d need to edit some PHP files to do so. I’ve been working on converting a lot of the build functions over to PHP classes. This allows for simpler addressing of a section. There are only the two presets options right now, but there could be future options added to the drop down without too much work. These are sort of an interim solution until I rework the interfaces UI.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

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[Jeffrey, WB9OUF]

Thank you very much Aaron

In reference to item 4), How do I upload the module? It doesn’t appear on “find modules on openrepeater.com”, I do however find MODULE_TxFan on Githup, is that the one of which you speak?
Do I click on “Clone or download” then download zip, or copy the 7 files listed starting with

“svxlink Initial 0.1 commit 2 months ago”?

My question in Items #1, #2, & #3 were based on my intent to basically have my UHF repeater on Port 1, and have a VHF transceiver on port 2 linked to and both sharing audio, such that two people carrying on a conversation on the UHF repeater could simultaneously carry on a conversation with someone on lets say 146.52Mhz simplex on port 2.

Item #3 was this if I could remotely (by DTMF) enable or disable that ability?

Sorry for all the questions, but that you very much for your time, and very detailed and informative answers.

***But I’ll trade you, if your have any questions about heart surgery, or heart transplants, I’ll answer them hopefully with the same detail LOL***

Thank you again,

Jeff-WB9OUF

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Jeff,
To upload the module you can download it from GitHub. Select the “Clone or Download” dropdown and click on the Download Zip. Then upload the zip file into ORP to install.

As for enabling and disabling linking between sections yes and no. Yes it is doable as it is in the SVXLink core, but it has not been built into the ORP UI yet. It is certainly possible with a little bit of hacking.

Check out: http://www.svxlink.org/doc/man/man5/svxlink.conf.5.html and search for “CONNECT_LOGICS”. ORP is building a linking section between the duplex logic (port 1) and simplex logic (port 2), but it doesn’t include the DTMF codes or announcement text. Certainly can modify the PHP file that builds the config and hard code it on your install until we build that feature in. Certainly doable.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

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[Jeffrey, WB9OUF]

Aaron,
In the link you gave me above, I notice the configurable variable “IDENT_ONLY_AFTER_TX”
How…(in simple terms)…can I utilize it to sequence the ID to actual repeater use?
Still working with Dan at ICS on the echo problem, but want to move ahead with other aspects too.

73,

Jeff-WB9OUF

[Aaron, N3MBH]

The IDENT_ONLY_AFTER_TX only affects the short ID. If set then the repeater will only identify with the short IDs when there has been recent activity. The Long IDs are unaffected by this.

I am incorporating UI for this into 2.2.0. If you are trying to hard code it or test it temporarily in conf file then it has to be set to “IDENT_ONLY_AFTER_TX=4”. Not sure why, but that’s the examples that I’ve found on it.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

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