[Anonymous]

My observations are for openrepeater-raspi2-1.0.0-beta1-07_07_15.img.

#1 – The password for ‘root’ is ‘debian’, not ‘OpenRepeater’. This has already been observed by others.

#2 – The Locale seems to be incompletely set, I get:
—
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = “en_US.UTF-8”
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale (“C”).
—

#3 – I like ‘vim’, and would appreciate that it was on by default, but it’s not a critical issue.

To be continued.

[Anonymous]

#4 Audio device config – some trial & error, but I found out the following to get a decent functionality:
1. Perform “aplay -L” to list the devices.
2. Locate the device starting with “plughw”, in my case it’s “plughw:CARD=Set,DEV=0”
3. Copy the complete string “plughw:CARD=Set,DEV=0”
4. Insert it in the fields “RX Audio Device” and “TX Audio Device” prepended with “alsa:” so that both fields reads “alsa:plughw:CARD=Set,DEV=0”.

#5 The Tx/Rx ports page does not allow for selection of CTCSS, even though that is a core feature for repeaters. Not all radios do support CTCSS, especially older ones and the support for CTCSS would be good. As it is now a manual edit of the config file was needed.

#6 It seems like the GPIO pin in the wiring diagram and the default config don’t match. Not a major headache thing, but could cause some confusion.

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Nils H, Thanks for your input on the Beta. Just a couple comments.

#1 – As you have stated, others are aware of the PW issue, this only affects the RPI2 and C1. We plan to address this on the next build. For the time being, I have entered what the PWs are for the board in the Getting Started guide.

#4 – Yes every situation might be a little different especially when folks are bringing their own hardware to the table. We plan to add script that reads in the available audio devices and channels to populate a dropdown to facilitate easier detection and selection for ports.

#5 – Right now the CTCSS is on the main settings page and is not fully implemented. CTCSS is support in the core but has not been tested for reliability. I am thinking of moving the CTCSS into the ports section. This will allow different tones/settings to be selected for different ports. The ports section is still under construction an was recently added to make provision for…well more ports.

#6 GPIO will vary from device to device. One thought I have had when we design our own hardware is to include an eprom that can be read when the board it plugged in to auto set this if it is present.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

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

[Anonymous]

Seems like there is a timing issue on the startup since I do occasionally get problems with opening the sound device when rebooting.

It might help to change S03svxlink to execute later in /etc/rc5.d, I tried to put it after S04rmnologin – and it shouldn’t be a problem to log in before svxlink is started anyway.

—
2015-08-07 08:27:55: SvxLink v1.4.1 (Jul 6 2015) Copyright (C) 2003-2014 Tobias Blomberg / SM0SVX
2015-08-07 08:27:55:
2015-08-07 08:27:55: SvxLink comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
2015-08-07 08:27:55: welcome to redistribute it in accordance with the terms and conditions in the
2015-08-07 08:27:55: GNU GPL (General Public License) version 2 or later.
2015-08-07 08:27:55:
2015-08-07 08:27:55: Using configuration file: /etc/openrepeater/svxlink/svxlink.conf
2015-08-07 08:27:55: — Using sample rate 16000Hz
2015-08-07 08:27:55:
2015-08-07 08:27:55: Starting logic: RepeaterLogic
2015-08-07 08:27:55: Loading RX: Rx1
2015-08-07 08:27:55: Starting CCIR1 decoder
2015-08-07 08:27:55: *** ERROR: Open capture audio device failed: Device or resource busy
2015-08-07 08:27:55: *** ERROR: Could not open audio device for receiver “Rx1”
2015-08-07 08:27:55: *** ERROR: Could not initialize RX “Rx1”
2015-08-07 08:27:55: *** ERROR: Could not initialize Logic object “RepeaterLogic”. Skipping…
2015-08-07 08:27:55: *** ERROR: No logics available. Bailing out…
—

[Anonymous]

I got it working now, however long term tests are needed to ensure the stability of the solution.

I did also make a short presentation of what I built and the components used:
http://www.bedug.com/pics/Radio/Ericsson_F800_Repeater.pdf
http://www.bedug.com/pics/Radio/svxlink.txt

[Aaron, N3MBH]

Excellent Nils, glad you got it up and working! Looks like a great setup you have and your PDF is nicely documented. Looking at your schematic of your interface and other notes about config, it looks like you are using the software vox. Your radio appears to have a COS line since you have a carrier LED. If that comes on when it receives an incoming signal, then with a little extra circuitry (optocoupler and a resister) you can tie that into a GPIO pin on the PI for more reliability. We don’t have that very well documented at the moment, but we hope to make some basic schematics here soon to work towards an interface board.

73,
Aaron – N3MBH / WRFV871

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

[Anonymous]

I agree – it should be possible to use the carrier indicator and feed that information to the Raspberry. I don’t think it would be necessary to have an optocoupler though, just a transistor and a pull-up resistor connected to the +3.3V of the Raspberry.

Something for the future would then be to have a logic in the Raspberry so that it would be possible to combine carrier with any of the other detection logics so it would be possible to have something like:
CARRIER and (CTCSS or 1750 or DTMF)

I could have used protection diodes on the PTT transistor, but since there’s no relay in the radio and only solid state logic I didn’t think it was necessary.

The F800 also have a serial interface, but I don’t know what commands it takes and what the responses are otherwise it might be possible to do something even more interesting. But at the moment I wanted to make something that was simple and could be re-used on other radios as well.

I also realized that the fan in the box should be replaced with a more modern one, the current has been around in the box for 2 decades and is also inducing some electrical noise causing some slight fan noise on the outgoing carrier. Nothing critical though.

[Anonymous]

Something I haven’t checked is if there is a ‘logrotate’ feature in the image, that should probably be useful since a repeater can be standalone for a long time. A full disk would have a negative impact on the functionality.

[Richard, N4CNR]

guys I used a default debian im g. I did not set the languages. I only used whats default.

I havebeen working on a new img and will have it up soom there is a beta 3 file I have and I am working on beta 4 . I have been adding in some new functions like getting time from gps.

I am also working on some other parts I got the alsamixer issue fixed in the newer imgae.

I will add in vim . but for the most part we are trying to keep the images to whats releater to the svxlink/openrepeater.

I have also added flite for tts.

I will be posting a new img and a full change log.

we are also working on finding people to help mainttain images. there is also a pkg based install script used to build images in the github repo.

[Richard, N4CNR]

I am also working to get the rsyslog working and a few other parts like fail2ban and monit. I hope to have these fixed soon.

I as 1 person can only do so much.

Its also nice to hear a thankyou for all your work and great job.

the gui is very basic at this point. Arron has a family he has to spend time with . and I work for the railroad.

So if you have skills and would like to get in and help us dev please email us and we will get with you .

[Author]

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