开云体育

Hello all,

I have uploaded some new Debian packages for lzhuf to /g/d-rats/files/D-Rats .

Added:

Ubuntu 24.04 on x86_64
Debian Bookworm for x86_64 and arm64v8
Debian Buster for armv7l

The arm64v8 package is compatible with Raspberry PI 64 bit.
The armv7l package is compatible with Raspberry PI 32 bit.

Packages already present:
Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 22.04 on x86_64
Debian bullseye and buster for x86_64
Microsoft Windows v7 and newer

Some technical details. All the non-Windows builds were done on an Ubuntu 22.04 x86_64 system using docker containers.

The lzhuf repository has instructions on how to build native Microsoft packages and also how to use an 86_64 system to build debian binary packages for x86_64 and two current releases of Rasbian.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

Hi John

I read your presentation from the link! The presentation reads easily but not being conversant with the software technology I can’t offer any useful comments!

Use D-rats weekly to check into Alabama Ratflector! Use on 32 bit version of Ubuntu or Mint cinnamon and it works pretty well!

My use is limited to the chat mode and the maps! Also occasionally use the weather app to periodically provide Chicago WX! Alabama group uses the QST function to announce local hamfests and VE test sessions that occur within the local Alabama area!

Hope this limited review provides some help!!

73

Ralph Barbakoff (WA9LKZ)

Hello All,

I have started work on a blog post for a future presentation at my local ham radio club.

This is intended to be only an overview, not deep details.

Any feedback is welcome.



Regards,
-John
wb8tyw@...

Attachment?

Ralph Barbakoff (WA9LKZ)

John,

There was no attachment.

Jack KD4IZ

On 3/30/2024 4:47 PM, Glen Strecker wrote:

Right now, my client can't even talk to its own repeater unless I
tell it to connect to its internal IP address being assigned by the
router. If I go through my normal URL address,
sttammany.ratflector.com, it gets refused every time.

That indicates a passthrough issue at the NAT routers().

When I switched to Fiber service, the ISP provided me with a WAP router that I have limited configuration control over, and then my personal WAP router is connected to it.

In order to have a public IP address, which would be a DHCP address, I have to setup a special rule on the ISP WAP router to direct incoming traffic from specific port to a specific IP address on their NAT range. (port forwarding?)

It is not just a matter of opening up the ports, they have to be directed to specific host. Some NAT routers allow you to specify a IP address to be sent to a local host.

If I do not want to plug the "public" system into the ISP NAT router, and plug it into my NAT router, then it gets more complex to setup.

Also, some ISPs are no longer giving out a unique public IP address from their NAT routers. If you have one of those ISP's you are basically out of luck for home hosting.

If I try to load version 0.4.2 it throws an error trying to load
something called pyaudio. Has everyone moved up to Raspberry Pi
Bookworm to get this stuff going?

I just got bookworm setup on an RPI-4 last weekend and have not had time to test it D-Rats on it. Previously development was done on Anti-X linux using Buster and then Bullseye as their base.

The pyaudio should be handled by installing python-pyaudio. Generally the package names are the same on most Debian based systems.

I was positively content with version 0.3.9 until they started doing
away with the python 2 dependencies and you could not reload it on a
new system anymore.

D-Rats 0.3.9 will drop bytes on a connection to an actual radio, this seems to mainly show up on faster computers. If the input buffer from reading the radio is ever empty, d-rats 0.3.9 incorrectly assumes that the next byte from the radio should be an XON or XOFF character and if not, it just discards it, causing the entire packet received by d-rats to be unreadable. This showed up in file transfer tests over a simulated radio link.

I cannot get a client on another computer to connect to either the
URL updated at Noip.com, or the ,ratflector.com address. I can't even
connect going to my external IP address assigned to my router. I have
the port forwarding set on the router but it seems that something is not
being handled correctly. I can connect to SEWX. I am tending to think
it is something to do with Charter Spectrum because with my previous IP
provider I did not have such problems.

First thing to look at is what address your ISP MODEM is presenting to the WAP router. If it is not the public address your external connection is at, then that is the first thing to resolve.

You need to find out if your ISP Modem is bundled with a WAP router, and then you need to find out what you can configure on the ISP WAP router.

73,
-John
wb8tyw

Hello All,

I have started work on a blog post for a future presentation at my local ham radio club.

This is intended to be only an overview, not deep details.

Any feedback is welcome.

Regards,
-John
wb8tyw@...

D-STAR InfoCon is back at Dayton Hamvention for 2024?providing an introduction to D-STAR for new users and more advanced topics for more experienced D-STAR users. The class will be held at the Drury Inn Ballroom at 6616 Miller Lane in the heart of hotel row in Dayton. The 3-hour class will be held on Friday, May 17th beginning at 8:00am local time. This year’s topics will include getting on-the-air with D-STAR, how to connect around the world, programming for all models of D-STAR radios, using DR Mode, easy updating your radio memories and using hotspots and other D-STAR devices.

?

·???????? Basics of digital radio and D-STAR

• Getting started with your D-STAR radio
• The D-STAR user registration process explained
• Programming your D-STAR radios
• Linking to repeaters and reflectors
• Helpful hints and tips to get the most from D-STAR
• D-STAR Data (D-RATS) and DD Mode

The class is $25 and advance registration and payment is required. Complete registration and payment at . An Icom ID-52A handheld D-STAR radio will be given away to one lucky student during the class.

Right now, my client can't even talk to its own repeater unless I tell it to connect to its internal IP address being assigned by the router. ?If I go through my normal URL address, sttammany.ratflector.com, it gets refused every time. ?If I try to load version 0.4.2 it throws an error trying to load something called pyaudio. ?Has everyone moved up to Raspberry Pi Bookworm to get this stuff going? ?I was positively content with version 0.3.9 until they started doing away with the python 2 dependencies and you could not reload it on a new system anymore. ? ?I cannot get a client on another computer to connect to either the URL updated at Noip.com, or the ,ratflector.com address. ?I can't even connect going to my external IP address assigned to my router. ?I have the port forwarding set on the router but it seems that something is not being handled correctly. ?I can connect to SEWX. ? I am tending to think it is something to do with Charter Spectrum because with my previous IP provider I did not have such problems.

I just had to switch IP providers and am now on Charter Spectrum. ?They gave me a new router and I have opened ports 9000 and 9500 in the router. ?I also had to completely rebuild my Raspberry Pi D-Rats installation and have Version 0.4.1 loaded. ?I have checked the ports on the target machine with portchecktool.com and that Internet based program indicates the two needed ports are open and listening. ?However, when I start the D-Rats repeater and try to connect with a client I get the following: ?StTammany: Unable to connect ([Errno 111] Connection refused).

I have refreshed the SD card, tried other versions of the software, but I still get Connection refused, or target actively refused the connection. ?What am I doing wrong?? ?The system has been down for a couple of weeks now after the older Pi I was using, still running Buster and version 0.3.9 started messing up. ?While trying to fix the refusal problem I ended up bricking the SD card and, of course, I can't do a new install of 0.3.9 as the required dependencies are no longer available for the older software. ?Any ideas. ?I am getting the same messages from the K5PDR ratflector up in Pennsylvania that has been refusing connections for quite a while.

I know this is old, but I did have some communication with Ray Novak about the issue of at least text/chat compatibility on D-Rats and RS-MS1A (or i).?

As you know, the phone apps require the data stream to be in CI-V mode on the radio. I imagine this is because the phone app is used to send CI-V commands to the radio, which is something D-Rats is not concerned with. D-Rats needs "DV Data" which, from what I know, just sends streams of serial data in and out of the serial port.?

Chat in D-Rats can detect chat (text) from the phone app. If you turn on "raw data" you will see incorrectly formatted text chat in D-Rats (which is usually somewhat readable), much like incorrectly formatted D-PRS data comes into D-Rats if you leave it on.?

The issue is format for D-Rats but the bigger issue is whatever serial chat data D-Rats sends can't be read by the phone app. Apparently the phone app has no "raw data" mode, and if the format isn't correct, it just does not appear. I think the correction for this---in chat anyway---is with the phone app, not in D-Rats.?

My comms with Ray were a long time ago. Not sure a ticket was ever put in for Icom to look at this or not. It would be real nice for somebody with just a radio and a phone to join in on chat. I suspect pictures, files, email and other stuff are beyond the scope of this.?

I have both those radios and they can work together with data. First item as you saw is 5100 has "fast data" mode. THis does not exist on the 7100 or other older DStar radios. Just FYI, "Fast Data" is the ONLY data option on the Kenwood TH74 and TH75. "Fast Data" is OK, but it works by taking all the bandwidth including what you may have wanted for voice. It's faster but for chat it's not noticeably faster. D-Rats chat is very fast. In my experience (extensive) it's as fast as "fast packet" and FASTER than VARA chat. Yep. VARA? is error corrected and that overhead slows it down on chat. D-Rats chat is raw data---no correction--makes it really fast but can have errors.? On file transfers, well, it blows D-Rats away.?

If both your radios are on slow data, make sure BOTH radios have your data mode set to "DV Data". NOT CI-V!? This is a common problem where D-Rats data does not seem to work. To use your phone app you swich to CI-V. You have to switch back for D-Rats.?

Other than that, I don't know why they don't talk to each other. And D-Rats was designed for simplex. It's actually faster in simplex.?

One thing to add for this thread---back before some of the updates I got the "D-Rats Repeater" to work here, so I could connect a TNC-X (yeah, hardware works fine) on an 880H to D-Rats as well as another radio using D-Rats seriall data and they bridged chat. I would transmit chat on the 880H (packet, not D-Rats) it came into D-Rats then re-transmitted out on say my 5100 as DV Data. Every connection saw everything in chat. Now I can't get it to work at all. I wonder if something broke in some of the D-Rats updates over the past few years??

I'm trying to communicate between a 5100 and a 7100 over RF using a simplex frequency.? I was getting nothing between them until I saw your post regarding the 5100 setting.? Thanks!?
Now it works one way (from the 5100 to the 7100) but nothing going from the 7100 to the 5100 (i.e., under the Chat tab).? ?I want to be able to do email, exchange files, etc via simplex but I've had no luck connecting the two.? Any thoughts??

From what I know, DStar is the only digital radio format that allows this kind of use of serial data. DMR can do very limited messaging, Fusion blocks the serial data except for programming and TNC, DStar allows full use of the serial data portion of the digital signal.?

Frankly, we practice D-Rats every week and have limited issues with version 0.3.9 on modern Windows computers (I use on 7, 10, 11). Yes, it throws error messages now and then (which can usually be dismissed). Sometimes it crashes. Sometimes, if you have been fooling around with things it won't send a message until you restart the program? (which takes seconds). To compare this to WinLink is a poor comparison. WinLink VHF RMS nodes are too rare in most parts of the US to be considered a viable emcomm mode. WinLink on HF is an emcomm disaster---it chokes instantly even in a drill. Can't handle much throughput and despite what you read, it is very dependent on internet connectivity. Try the hybrid mode sometime. Report back how that went for you. If you can't hit AWS, you are SOL with WinLink---sorry, been using it for years and know that when ARC allows Telnet for their big drills, they are aware of the throughput limitation. NBEMS is great. I'm with John Davis---we do all three up here in PA (D-Rats, WinLink (VHF--we now have a node) and NBEMS on VHF and HF. Of the three, DStar and DRats is the most complete and also the easiest to use in the field, requiring the least equipment. It is my experience that getting a software TNC running for NBEMS in the field and getting your FM radio to key on FLDigi can take WAY more time than a quick D-Rats restart. WinLink on VHF if you are in an area with VHF nodes is a solid system. THey also have a big war chest and a ton of support. Look at their 990 sometime. I have.?

I have bridged radios using the repeater proxy (ratflector) function in the the past. At some point during all the updates to D-Rats, I can no longer use the RF repeater function. Ratflector seems to work for internet, but not as it was intended to be used---as an RF bridge. Anybody have this working in any current version of D-Rats? We need this function for emcomm and relay into the repeater.