Posts Tagged ‘asterisk’

LHS Episode #085: David Rowe on Codec2

Please join us for a special episode of Linux in the Ham Shack. In Episode #085, the hosts interview a vibrant and brilliant engineer from Adelaide, South Australia, named David Rowe. He is the mastermind behind the codec2 open voice codec among several other worthy and equally brilliant open source projects. He dabbles in VoIP, hardware, Open Source advocacy, engineering, voice compression, amateur radio and other endeavors far too numerous to name. David Rowe is definitely one of the more special people occupying our planet and our interview with him is nothing short of amazing. Please tune in and have your mind blown. We look forward to the overspray.

73 de The LHS Guys

Show Notes #076

Introduction:

Announcements:

  • The Black Sparrow Media application for iPad, iPhone and iPod has been submitted to the iTunes store. It is just awaiting validation from Apple, which may take up to two weeks. We’ll let everyone know when it’s available.
  • Special Event Station W0S (Whiskey Zero Sierra) will be operating from the Titanic Branson Museum from April 13-15, 2012, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Russ, K5TUX, will be operating the station at some point.

Feedback:

  • Scott, AD7MI, asks for help linking APRS and his his Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station with Xastir. Our hosts suggest trying one or both of these:
      • Meteo – Davis weather station platform software for Linux. You can subscribe to the Meteo mailing list by sending a subscription request to [email protected]. It has been several years since Meteo was updated, and is still not at version 1.0. You must download the .tar file from the web site as it does not appear in the distribution repositories.
      • wview- Cross-platform weather station software. It does need an internet connection if you are going to contribute information to various weather sites, such as:

        This program is under active development. Even if it requires a work-around to perform as you wish, it may be worth the trouble. If you’ve ever configured a Linksys router, the web interface of wview looks a lot like that. wview has a support site via Google Groups at http://groups.google.com/group/wview.

    Let us know how you get on, Scott!

  • Paul, M0PGX, replied to our recent discussion of D-STAR and suggests trying the AllStar Link Network. Like EchoLink, it allows you to talk to other ham radio operators using just your computer and a microphone, including those operators running D-STAR.

    Russ signed up for the AllStarLink network; it’s very similar to joining EchoLink. AllStar uses the Asterisk VOIP system, and Jim, WB6NIL, is the author of the repeater link software. Russ had success using a Mac computer, but not with a Linux machine.

    Richard sees the biggest problem with EchoLink is that it only allows one connection per IP address, so you can’t have both a server and client at home. The EchoLink site only sees your IP address assigned by your ISP, which limits you to one connect from home. In this respect, AllStarLink appears to better in that it seems to allow multiple connections.

    AllStarLink is available in several combinations of Linux and Asterisk:

    • ACID – based on CentOS
    • Limey Linux – based on embedded Linux and bootable from a flash drive, and runs ONLY on several specific Mini-ITX motherboards.
    • Pickle – a specialized embedded Linux distro designed to operate on a BeagleBoard-xM (and DMK Engineering LOX board).

    Russ then provides an overview of setting up an AllStar Link client.

  • Back to Paul’s email, he suggests we use the term “digital mode” when we should say “protocol”, which brings us to…
  • Leif, KC8RWR, responded to Paul’s comment that D-STAR specifies a protocol, modulation mode, voice codec, etc. The modulation mode used is GMSK.

    Richard defends the use of “mode” as appropriate as the definition allows it to mean “a method or means of doing something”. For example, CW vs DFCW (dual-frequency CW), where DFCW uses frequency shifts to distinguish dots and dashes, rather than two different lengths of the same frequency, and spaces. Both are CW.

  • Leif, KC8RWR, also comments on the possibility that he’s been nitpicking, as well as the use of Q-signals in voice conversations.
  • Bill, KE5WMA, suggests that hobos migrate to New Orleans from Dallas this time of year because Dallas doesn’t have Mardi Gras!
  • We received a donation from Bill H. Thanks, Big Poppa! :)
  • Contact Info:

    Music:

    • To be added.

    LHS Episode #076: BIG PAPA

    After our quick renumbering, we come now to Episode #076. It didn’t start out as an all-feedback episode, but that’s how it wound up. The best part is, we had such good feedback from our listeners it made an entire show. As it also happens, most of our discussion revolves around digital mode communication for amateur radio using Linux. We touch on D-Star, Echolink, IRLP, Allstar Link and more. If you’re interested in using computers to connect to your radios and talk around the world using a multitude of digital technologies, including VoIP, this is the episode for you.

    Please keep those donations coming in for our Hamvention Fund, if you’re able. We want to be a part of Hamvention and we hope you will be, too. Thank you for all you do.


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