[Dan, KG7PAR]

Can you explain the setup in enough detail to where we can try to reproduce the echo? what port are you using, where are you hearing the echo, how loud is the echo, etc. the more details the better.

We have only ever heard about this one other time and were never able to reproduce the symptom. It is certainly possible there is a corner case, although the audio paths are completely separated except inside the audio codec chip.

[Dan, KG7PAR]

As Aaron mentioned, the groups.io forum is your best option for this type of issue. We know some of svxlink, but it is a monster with a lot of options. This specific question was raised before and died after I forwarded the response originally. I would recommend posting your findings here after confirming what Aaron stated about making sure the variable didn’t get overwritten by accident.

https://groups.io/g/svxlink/topic/68710004#358

[Dan, KG7PAR]

Hi Dave,

Here is the best we can offer. We know the mtr2000 are touchy and hard to get just right. We don’t have any personal experience with them but lots of effort went into getting our mtr controller board tested by a couple brave souls. The two gentlemen that pulled this information together took about 3 months going back and forth in the end to get it working properly.

https://ics-ctrl.com/using-the-pi-repeater-1x-mtr2000-with-the-mtr2000/

[Dan, KG7PAR]

This feature is something we all desire ?. We have discussed this feature many times, but we don’t have enough of a development team to push out many features on the Open Repeater platform.  Really there are 2 of us that are the core of Open Repeater, and random folks join and dissolve without jumping in much. Wish that would change, but wish in 1 hand… as the saying goes.

There is a couple possible ways to implement this that I think are reasonably feasible, but they are all hacks at the moment as there is no native infrastructure in the svxlink software platform for dynamic announcements.

None of this has been tested, but should work.  I saw a long time ago a module similar to #2, but the code was taken down before I could grab it so it needs recreated. Something on my list for a long time now, but no bandwidth to recreate from scratch.

1) using cron/pytjon/etc and the infrastructure we are exploring for using voice control (very early alpha side application, but proof of concept is working). Join the open repeater development team if you want to get into the voice work. It is on hold at the moment as I am buried with dayjob work.

2) there is the ability to create modules (TCL or C language, strongly suggest TCL) that plug into the svxlink features which can subscribe to a timer.  Within the module, it could do some math to figure out the time, day, etc and then play an announcement as appropriate.

3) get into the user interface files  (basic TCL scripting, don’t jump overboard yet), and do some work similar to #2, so the system uses a dynamically selected file based on some criteria.  This is the best approach, and uses the native structure which will be the most graceful.  The challenge will be having it be able to change behavior without rebooting the system.  I have some ideas for this though.

I would be happy to help guide you in any of these approaches if you are willing to put in the legwork and share the code with the open repeater/svxlink team for possible inclusion somewhere in the future, or just as reference material for others who follow.

I know I could get any of these going given enough time, but alas, its in short supply for volunteer work right now.

Dan

[Dan, KG7PAR]

https://github.com/OpenRepeater/openrepeater/issues/58

This is a known issue that will be addressed in an upcoming version

[Dan, KG7PAR]

Hi Klaus,

If your IC-1200 has a COS LED you can get access to, that would be far easier,I suggest to have someone who is familiar with electronics and soldering help you to add a wire to the LED (Be sure to get the signal that has at least 3V-5V driving it (you may need the current limiting resistor instead of the LED) to use as the COS signal on a controller.

This will be your best approach for getting the squelch control signal from your two radio options.

Good Luck

Dan

[Dan, KG7PAR]

Hi Klaus,

This is Dan from ICS, I have read up on the TM-641/741 service manual (closest I could locate that was legible, http://www.repeater-builder.com/kenwood/pdfs/tm-641-741-svc-man.pdf, see page 23 for the 3 sentence description of squelch volume input) and best I can tell, the way squelch is done on the radio does not lend itself to being able to extract the signal from the radio easily.

The best I think you can do is to tap the voltage output of the squelch circuit (I didn’t get into this level of detail schematically) and putting that into a comparitor circuit with a potentiometer to adjust the threshold and use the output of the comparitor circuit as your squelch. Of course this will not nicely match the software version of the squelch circuit so the software would have the be set the software version to a minimum level and then use the external built circuit as the control for the repeater.

In this particular instance, you may be best suited to using VOX or see if you can find a ham with a radio that exposes the COS circuit that you can make a reasonable trade with.

[Dan, KG7PAR]

Jeff, can you please do a quick recording of the audio so I can hear the echo effect. This isn’t normal sound behavior.

Support at ics-ctrl dot com

Thanks
Dan

[Dan, KG7PAR]

Hi Jeff,

Are you measuring the input audio on the resistor at Q1/Q2 or the unconnected pad? If using the unconnected pad then you wont see any audio, its actually a gpio signal. Be sure to measure on the 0 ohm resistor that shorts the traces together. The Q1 and Q2 were meant to be a hardware audio lockout feature that never really worked right so we just removed the feature.

Dan

[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

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