Re: Digipeater/iGate Success
Thanks for the warning, Gil. ?
In this case the ground in the K connector to the HT has a ground that¡¯s common between the mic, speaker and PTT.?
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Re: Digipeater/iGate Success
Hey Doug, you had better watch out. There is a good chance you will get a bunch of people picking your circuit apart just because they have nothing better to do. I posted my PTT circuit and that's what I got even though it works fine. My circuit was very similar to yours with the opto, but I happened to show the common ground that still remains between the devices. I was told that was not true isolation. Unfortunately the ground will exist through power supplies or whatever means, unless specifically designed not to. I wanted my grounds to be common between devices to avoid voltage potential differences on the grounds. I can have my ground attached to my shack ground as well for static protection, I'd say lightning but nothing withstands lightning. Don't fix it if it's not broken. 73.
On Tue, Mar 5, 2024 at 5:16?PM Doug Kaye (K6DRK) < doug@...> wrote: I just finished my 10th digipeater/iGate. This one for a friend, NZ6J. Uses a Pi Zero 2W and a Quansheng HT (USB powered!). Here's the interesting circuity for those who care:
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Re: CM108 PTT randomly interferes with the mouse
Unfortunately it already failed on low TX power. I then added more ferrites to the ptt line and got the same result. I will continue to experiment with this.
The cm108 modification I did connects the pi and radio grounds. So I figure CM current might lead to such issues. I might see if rebuilding the cm108 with an isolated circuit will fix it. I have some optocouplers and audio isolation transformers laying around that I can use.
On a related note:
I just finished testing my diy GPIO ptt adapter, and it works great on the pi5 using a small python script. However when I tried using it with direwolf, I stumbled in to a known issue with pi5 gpio:
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Re: CM108 PTT randomly interferes with the mouse
I probably should have described my antenna setup. I'm using a Comet GP-6 mounted ~70' from the radio on my rooftop (~20' from ground), with 100' LMR400 running to a switch, and 3' LMR400 between switch and ht. I added 2x 8" loops of coax near the antenna per the manual. I also have a ground strap connected to the steel mast it is attached to, a choke on the coax just before the radio, and another choke on the audio/ptt cable with 3-turns (both the correct mix from Palomar). So I hope it's not still somehow rf related... maybe a coax adapter or the switch. I did my VNA measurements where coax that enters the switch. The uv5r+antenna setup otherwise seems to work well... reaching distant repeaters, good audio reports, etc.
That experiment is a great idea, thanks. I switched to low power and will let it repeat throughout the evening. Fingers crossed it still works tomorrow. If it does I'll bump the power back up to high just to verify it isn't like some recent update or something else.?
On a side note, the $100's worth of coax and antenna is just for the $15 radio hehe... I plan on getting a 9700 (for satellite etc) to put next to my 7300. When that happens I'll have to come up with another antenna for this.
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I just finished my 10th digipeater/iGate. This one for a friend, NZ6J. Uses a Pi Zero 2W and a Quansheng HT (USB powered!). Here's the interesting circuity for those who care:  
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Re: CM108 PTT randomly interferes with the mouse
If things are going fine, until you transmit, then something weird happens, it is probably RF getting back into your computer.
As an experiment, try changing to low power transmit.? If that improves your situation, it is good evidence that stray RF is the problem.
The solution is to put the antenna farther away from digital devices and to put ferrite beads on your cables.
73,
John Wb2OSZ
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CM108 PTT randomly interferes with the mouse
I built some PTT modified CM108 dongles for my buddy and I to use with our uv5r's and direwolf+xastir. These are connected to headless pi5's running bookworm, and vnc is the primary means of access?(through LAN). At first glance the cm108 audio and PTT appear to work as expected, however after transmitting the vnc cleint mouse will randomly stop responding. The timing is completely random... sometimes it goes out within a few seconds, sometimes after an hour or so of operation. When it happens, I observed the cursor in the direwolf terminal goes from flashing on/off steady every second, to very rapid random flashing. The PTT itself doesn't seem to misbehave when this happens... the tx remains off. However once it happens there's not getting the mouse back without a reboot.
I am 99.9% sure the modifications were done properly and should work like other known good examples found online. I didn't precisely follow any one particular guide to do the mods, rather I read up on several designs and sort came up with my own preferred assembly. Some designs I saw didn't include a COS diode, some did, some had no PTT led, which I wanted... anyhow my schematic is typical of other mods known good mods nothing special. I'm happy to provide more details/photos if anyone thinks this might be a hardware issue. I also have an oscope and the other usual lab tools on hand if I need to probe around to help find the issue.
I have been using keyboard shortcuts to reboot when this happens. After reboot (as long as I don't actually trigger the cm108 ptt) the pi5 operates perfetly for weeks without issue (fldigi, ft8, logging, gqrx, etc). Also, I can run direwolf in udp mode with gqrx for days without any problems.
I tried researching this online and keep coming up short. I'm 99.9% certain the modifications were done properly with the correct components (I have a significant amount of experience designing/building such mods). The only thing I can thing that might be causing this is some sort of mixed up HID permissions with the vnc mouse and the local hid output. Alas, I'm somewhat a greenhorn when it comes to such things in linux. Has anyone else seen a similar issue, maybe not just with cm108 or pi5, but perhaps similar issues with HID and direwolf ptt? Is there something I can do to try and fix this? I'm happy to do additional troubleshooting since I know it may be needed to reach a conclusion. Any help is much appreciated.
I just finished designing a PCB to use GPIO for ptt (gonna mill a 10 pack on my cnc). So in the end I could just forget about using the cm108 for ptt anyways. However I'd like to learn something from this, and I'm concerned this exact same issue could occur even with GPIO. If someone provides me with the key to fix my cm108 ptt problems, I'll be happy to mail them a spare RPI ptt hat as a thank you.
Thanks,
Kevin KO6BLZ
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
Benson, if you happen to be using the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi OS version, this may be where the problem originates. The last time I looked into this version of OS the general consensus was it was not very good and required more debugging as it did not respond correctly to some software.
On Mon, Mar 4, 2024 at 7:12?AM Gil Rand < gilrand@...> wrote: Benson, I run Direwolf on a Raspberry Pi, whatever the old one was, a 2 maybe. The OS does not really have a root user like other versions of Linux do. The default user has certain privileges but not by default 'super user'. I 'sudo' everything during the install as I have noticed that some things either do not install correctly or at all if I just try to install with the default user without 'sudo' or 'sudo su'. Cron appeared to me to edit either way BUT there was a difference as the 'sudo' edit seemed to have system control whereas the user level edit did not appear to work the same. I am by no means an expert at Linux, and I bumble my way through most of it by reading internet articles. The systemd way, for me, was excellent. I am late to this party so I don't think I have the whole picture of what you are trying to do or why.
Gil - are you running it as root?
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
Benson, I run Direwolf on a Raspberry Pi, whatever the old one was, a 2 maybe. The OS does not really have a root user like other versions of Linux do. The default user has certain privileges but not by default 'super user'. I 'sudo' everything during the install as I have noticed that some things either do not install correctly or at all if I just try to install with the default user without 'sudo' or 'sudo su'. Cron appeared to me to edit either way BUT there was a difference as the 'sudo' edit seemed to have system control whereas the user level edit did not appear to work the same. I am by no means an expert at Linux, and I bumble my way through most of it by reading internet articles. The systemd way, for me, was excellent. I am late to this party so I don't think I have the whole picture of what you are trying to do or why.
Gil - are you running it as root?
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
Gil - are you running it as root?
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
I made a new account called 'btw'?? I didn't re-name the 'pi' account.? sudo -u btw crontab -e opens a crontab editor.????? The reason I didn't think the crontab containing reboot and calling Direwolf would work is because I thought it needed a terminal window to start it and remain open.
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
I have to assume there is some reason that using systemd and tmux is unacceptable. It works so well for me I have never found a reason to do something different.
btw@aprs-digi:~ $ apt list --installed | grep cron
WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.
cron-daemon-common/stable,stable,now 3.0pl1-162 all [installed]
cron/stable,now 3.0pl1-162 arm64 [installed]
?cron.service - Regular background program processing daemon
???? Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/cron.service; enabled; preset: >
???? Active: active (running) since Sun 2024-03-03 16:11:10 EST; 3h 25mi>
?????? Docs: man:cron(8)
?? Main PID: 519 (cron)
????? Tasks: 1 (limit: 1578)
??????? CPU: 3.178s
???? CGroup: /system.slice/cron.service
???????????? ©¸©¤519 /usr/sbin/cron -f
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
btw@aprs-digi:~ $ apt list --installed | grep cron
WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.
cron-daemon-common/stable,stable,now 3.0pl1-162 all [installed]
cron/stable,now 3.0pl1-162 arm64 [installed]
?cron.service - Regular background program processing daemon
???? Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/cron.service; enabled; preset: >
???? Active: active (running) since Sun 2024-03-03 16:11:10 EST; 3h 25mi>
?????? Docs: man:cron(8)
?? Main PID: 519 (cron)
????? Tasks: 1 (limit: 1578)
??????? CPU: 3.178s
???? CGroup: /system.slice/cron.service
???????????? ©¸©¤519 /usr/sbin/cron -f
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
I also just run it as a service under systemd. ? I found an elegant solution is to have a program called ¡°tmux¡± (terminal multiplexer) ?call it up and launch it. ?Then, after it auto run, I can see it action both locally or remotely by ssh using ¡°tmux¡±.
My systemd file: pi@RPi3-DireWolf:~ $ sudo cat /etc/systemd/system/direwolf.service
##### [Unit]
Description=Direwolf
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/tmux new-session -d -s direwolf '/usr/local/bin/direwolf -c /home/pi/direwolf.conf'
Restart=always
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target ###### Then, after its running in background, I can see it by: $ sudo tmux attach -t direwolf To save keystrokes. I made it a command called ¡°tmx¡± pi@RPi3-DireWolf:~ $ cat tmx
sudo tmux attach -t direwolf
¡ª¡ª¡ª
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On Mar 3, 2024, at 6:49?PM, The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510] <drwho@...> wrote:
?On Sunday, March 3rd, 2024 at 14:56, Benson via groups.io <benson@...> wrote:
I'm no closer to finding the answer unfortunately.? Editing the crontab, I use:? 'crontab -e' Also, I'm running cron as me, not root (I did test with root early on, but no longer).? Adding 'bash -c' to the cronjob did not work.? Like I mentioned, I can start dw-start.sh just fine at the command line.?? direwolf.conf is set to use CLI mode, not auto.
When you say that you're running cron as you, what do you mean?? What username do you log in with?? pi (the default)?? Did you create a new account for yourself, or rename the 'pi' account?
Just out of curiosity, what hapens if you run this?
sudo -u btw crontab -e?
@reboot /usr/local//bin/direwolf /path/to/your/direwolf.conf >/dev/null 2>&1?I don't think this will work if I'm just using a terminal window, will it?
It will.? What that will do is tell crond to run direwolf when the system boots up (and, as far as I can tell from using that trick under other contexts, only when the system boots, and not when, say. crond is restarted).
The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510]
WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/
Don't be mean. You don't have to be mean.
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
On Sunday, March 3rd, 2024 at 14:56, Benson via groups.io <benson@...> wrote:
I'm no closer to finding the answer unfortunately.? Editing the crontab, I use:? 'crontab -e' Also, I'm running cron as me, not root (I did test with root early on, but no longer).? Adding 'bash -c' to the cronjob did not work.? Like I mentioned, I can start dw-start.sh just fine at the command line.?? direwolf.conf is set to use CLI mode, not auto.
When you say that you're running cron as you, what do you mean?? What username do you log in with?? pi (the default)?? Did you create a new account for yourself, or rename the 'pi' account?
Just out of curiosity, what hapens if you run this?
sudo -u btw crontab -e?
@reboot /usr/local//bin/direwolf /path/to/your/direwolf.conf >/dev/null 2>&1?I don't think this will work if I'm just using a terminal window, will it?
It will.? What that will do is tell crond to run direwolf when the system boots up (and, as far as I can tell from using that trick under other contexts, only when the system boots, and not when, say. crond is restarted).
The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510]
WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/
Don't be mean. You don't have to be mean.
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
On Saturday, March 2nd, 2024 at 12:25, Benson via groups.io <benson@...> wrote:
I can start it from the command line - no problem!? But it won't start using cron.? Anyone else have any ideas
Because of systemd, crond is not necessarily installed at the same time.? What do you get if you run this command?
apt list --installed | grep cron?
Or this command?
systemctl status cron.service?
If crond is not installed, cronjobs won't execute.? Same if crond isn't enabled and running.
The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510]
WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/
Don't be mean. You don't have to be mean.
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
Does dw-start.sh have the ¡°run¡± bit set on permissions? ?That one got me once before. Arnold reply to: kq6di@...
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Show quoted text
On Mar 3, 2024, at 14:56, Benson via groups.io <benson@...> wrote:
?I'm no closer to finding the answer unfortunately.? Editing the crontab, I use:? 'crontab -e' Also, I'm running cron as me, not root (I did test with root early on, but no longer).? Adding 'bash -c' to the cronjob did not work.? Like I mentioned, I can start dw-start.sh just fine at the command line.?? direwolf.conf is set to use CLI mode, not auto.
@reboot /usr/local//bin/direwolf /path/to/your/direwolf.conf >/dev/null 2>&1?
??????? Reboot and see if it runs properly..
I don't think this will work if I'm just using a terminal window, will it?
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Re: RPi cron not working for me
I'm no closer to finding the answer unfortunately.? Editing the crontab, I use:? 'crontab -e' Also, I'm running cron as me, not root (I did test with root early on, but no longer).? Adding 'bash -c' to the cronjob did not work.? Like I mentioned, I can start dw-start.sh just fine at the command line.?? direwolf.conf is set to use CLI mode, not auto.
@reboot /usr/local//bin/direwolf /path/to/your/direwolf.conf >/dev/null 2>&1?
??????? Reboot and see if it runs properly..
I don't think this will work if I'm just using a terminal window, will it?
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Re: Digipeat specific callsign?
Thanks for the info. I tried putting in "DIGIPEAT 0 0 ^K9SWX-1$" in direwolf and setting my path in the HT to K9SWX-1,WIDE2-2 but it did not digipeat it. Do I need something else in direwolf to recognize the call from the HT to digipeat it?
Digging a bit deeper, this other option using a filter looks like it is working.
DIGIPEAT 0 0 ^WIDE1-1$ ^WIDE1-1$
FILTER 0 0 b/K9SWX/K9SWX-*
Does that look right? I used WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in my HT's path. So far I haven't seen any other WIDE1-1 packets other than my own get digipeated through my radio. I'm not sure if I would receive messages from other parties with that filter though. I tried sending myself a message via APRS.FI with a different SSID and it wasn't digipeated. I saw it show up from the local digipeater down the road but my test digi did not digipeat it.
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Re: Digipeat specific callsign?
Simple way to do it: don't use the standard WIDE1-1 and WIDE2-2 digipeat aliases. You can make up any alias you want (and use the New-N paradigm if you want), and only originating stations that specify your digipeat alias will be digipeated by your digi. For example, Bob Bruninga WB4APR (SK) proposed state-wide digi aliases, so gerrymandered states like Maryland could cover their whole state without blanketing 10 states away in all directions. The MD7-7 alias would only be recognized by digipeaters in Maryland, so digipeaters over the state line in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Delaware would not carry on. So, for your case, let's create a digipeat alias of MINE1-1. That would be the first digi alias on your HT, and the _only_ digipeat alias recognized by the car radio setup. So your car digi would ignore everyone else using WIDE1-1 or WIDE2-2. Or you don't even need to make up an alias; just specify the callsign-SSID of your digi (ala old-style connected-mode packet) and digipeat through it that way. So, assuming your HT's callsign-SSID is K9SWX-7 and the car is K9SWX-9, your HT digi path would be K9SWX-9,WIDE2-2. The only problem of this is, since your digi won't recognize anyone else, it won't forward anything _to_ your HT from anyone else. Andrew, KA2DDO ________________________________________ From: [email protected] < [email protected]> on behalf of Stan Olson <k9swx@...> Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2024 1:24 AM To: [email protected]Subject: [direwolf] Digipeat specific callsign? I'm wanting to setup a portable digipeater for when I'm at a park and want to go for a hike. I will transmit APRS from my Yaesu FT5 and have the Raspberry Pi / radio in the car digipeat it with a better antenna and a little more power than the HT. Is there a way in Direwolf to only digipeat packets to/from the callsign on my HT? I tried "DIGIPEAT 0 0 ^WIDE1-1$ ^WIDE1-1$" which works fine when I transmit with a path of WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 on the HT. However, it also digipeats anyone else who is in earshot of my radio which I don't want since it would interfere with other digipeaters. When I had a Kenwood D710, I was able to do this no problem but I haven't figured it out on Direwolf. Any ideas? Thanks! Stan - K9SWX
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Benson
The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415/510]
Stan Olson