Raspberry Pi D-STAR Gateway
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"John D. Hays" <john@...>
I've been working on a port of Jonathan's gateway and pcrepeatercontroller software to the ARM processor for the coming UDR56K (http://nwdigitalradio.com) digital radio. It has been running for a couple of months on KF7UFZ gateway (currently B).
I received my $35 Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org) Linux computer yesterday and this evening I had a few minutes after work and copied my port and configuration files over to the Raspberry Pi. I am successfully testing ircDDBGateway with GMSKRepeater (NQMHS board/DUTCH*Star beta firmware). I connected to REF001C to get some traffic and successfully made contacts with 3-4 stations.
I don't happen to have an Icom RP2C here at the shack to test, but Jonathan's ircDDBGateway does support it as a controller. root@raspberrypi:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARMv6-compatible processor rev 7 (v6l) BogoMIPS : 697.95 (The UDR56K processor shows 1064.96 BogoMIPS)
Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp java tls CPU implementer : 0x41 CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0xb76 CPU revision : 7
Hardware : BCM2708 Revision : 0002 Serial : 0000000099172048
top - 18:23:37 up 48 min, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.11 Tasks: 58 total, 1 running, 57 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 1.3%us, 3.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 95.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 190836k total, 180472k used, 10364k free, 6084k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 149508k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1102 root 20 0 82812 4608 2444 S 2.3 2.4 1:04.42 ircddbgatewayd 1187 root 20 0 40624 3008 2028 S 1.0 1.6 1:11.46 gmskrepeaterd
1253 root 20 0 2608 1152 936 R 1.0 0.6 0:00.09 top 491 root 20 0 1712 504 424 S 0.3 0.3 0:01.41 ifplugd
1 root 20 0 2076 700 608 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.69 init CPU utilization when keyed up is ircDDBGateway 9+% GMSKRepeater 4+% Operating System is Debian Squeeze (both platforms), for the Raspberry Pi I needed to install portaudio19-dev My Pi is housed in this box http://www.adafruit.com/products/859 and I'm powering it with http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004911E9M
John D. Hays K7VE PO Box 1223, Edmonds, WA 98020-1223   
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Dennis Rogers <n5vrp.satx@...>
Where did you purchase the RaspberryPi in the USA?
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Can you send me a link to the ordering site? Thanks! Dennis
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 8:42 PM, John D. Hays <john@...> wrote:
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"Trevor ." <m5aka@...>
--- On Wed, 13/6/12, Dennis Rogers <n5vrp.satx@...> wrote:
Can you send me a link to the ordering site?You can buy the Raspberry Pi through Premier Farnell/Element 14 http://www.farnell.com/ and RS Components. http://rswww.com/ Both distributors sell all over the world. 73 Trevor M5AKA
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Bruce Given <bruce.given@...>
There is a LARGE waiting list from what I can gather
the other board that you might want to look at is from VIA url is here http://apc.io/ they are starting to ship in July, it comes with Android , But it should not be too difficult to get debian or something similar up and running on it. I have ordered a couple and want to try them for various Ham radio digital projects including pairing with UDR56K regards Bruce VE2GZI -- I’d rather live in a world full of eccentric thinkers than one full of unthinking consumers.
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Sander Pool <sander_pool@...>
Excellent work! I'm really excited about these tiny linux computers and what they can do for embedded projects of all kinds of flavors. I recently built a focuser controller for my telescope using an Arduino and that wasn't very hard but having a full linux environment with screen, keyboard, debugger etc. for the same price (about) is amazing.
73, Sander W1SOP
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"John D. Hays" <john@...>
Hi Bruce,
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Yes there is a big waiting list, I got myself on the list within the first day or two of the announced availability and just received mine. The APC computer is indeed interesting, but since they are not yet available it's hard to say if a Debian install will be easy. I'll leave that to others.
There are a few other options like the Sheeva Plug, Beagleboard, etc. The gateway code is pretty distribution agnostic, but most folks run it on Debian or Red Hat derivitives. So if you have a "beefy" enough ARM processor and a Linux OS, it can probably be made to work.
Since the UDR56K already has the processor board, no external board will be required. It will not only be able to run the gateway and half-duplex access (hotspot) through it's own radio, but I'm fairly confident that you could run a couple of USB connected node adapters and build a mini-stack. Since ircDDBGateway also talks to Icom's RP2C, you might be able to integrate the UDR56K to add say 56K DD and let it also run the RP2C, eliminating the need for a separate computer.
One repeater configuration may be to use an external receiver with a node adapter and dvrptr board (I would probably not use the soundcard solution) combined with splitrepeater to build a full repeater with the UDR56K. John D. Hays K7VE PO Box 1223, Edmonds, WA 98020-1223
On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 5:49 AM, Bruce Given <bruce.given@...> wrote: There is a LARGE waiting list from what I can gather
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"William Stillwell - KI4SWY" <wkstill@...>
Makes me what to try on my friendlyarm boards which are way faster then rasberypi.
Raspberry pi is great for graphics as it has a very good video processor.
From: UniversalDigitalRadio@... [mailto:UniversalDigitalRadio@...] On Behalf Of John D. Hays
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 12:17 PM To: UniversalDigitalRadio@... Subject: Re: [UniversalDigitalRadio] Raspberry Pi D-STAR Gateway
Hi Bruce,
Yes there is a big waiting list, I got myself on the list within the first day or two of the announced availability and just received mine.
The APC computer is indeed interesting, but since they are not yet available it's hard to say if a Debian install will be easy. I'll leave that to others.
There are a few other options like the Sheeva Plug, Beagleboard, etc. The gateway code is pretty distribution agnostic, but most folks run it on Debian or Red Hat derivitives. So if you have a "beefy" enough ARM processor and a Linux OS, it can probably be made to work.
Since the UDR56K already has the processor board, no external board will be required. It will not only be able to run the gateway and half-duplex access (hotspot) through it's own radio, but I'm fairly confident that you could run a couple of USB connected node adapters and build a mini-stack. Since ircDDBGateway also talks to Icom's RP2C, you might be able to integrate the UDR56K to add say 56K DD and let it also run the RP2C, eliminating the need for a separate computer.
One repeater configuration may be to use an external receiver with a node adapter and dvrptr board (I would probably not use the soundcard solution) combined with splitrepeater to build a full repeater with the UDR56K. John D. Hays PO Box 1223, Edmonds, WA 98020-1223
On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 5:49 AM, Bruce Given <bruce.given@...> wrote: There is a LARGE waiting list from what I can gather
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Kristoff Bonne <kristoff@...>
Hi John,
On 13-06-12 03:42, John D. Hays wrote:
Wouldn't it be interesting to make up a lost on what ARM hardware or other platforms this software runs. The raspi is now proven. I have a pandaboard running ubuntu on which I can test this. There is also the beaglebone. I think Jonathan also mentioned the hawkboard (I don't know if he actually did run it on that board). I really like something like the beaglebone as it has a smaller formfactor that the beagleboard or pandaboard, does have USB and ethernet, it runs a off-the-shelf distro and also allows for hardware extensions using the GPIO port and the serial port if you want to interface it with -say- an arduino based platform. (say something to interface it with a weather station, or get it to play out messages when the voltage of the battery goes low). 73 Kristoff - ON1ARF
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Kristoff Bonne <kristoff@...>
Hi William, I also have a friendlyarm. What distro are you running on yours? When using its linux native distro, I managed to get ALSA to work (which I need for my tests with gmsk modem), but getting anything else ported to it gives me all kind of issues). I also tried angrom linux which does have a lot of packages ported, but I couldn't get ALSA to work on it correctly. 73 Kristoff - ON1ARF
On 13-06-12 18:25, William Stillwell - KI4SWY wrote:
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"William Stillwell - KI4SWY" <wkstill@...>
Still the stock firmware L
I got to many projects going on. From: Kristoff Bonne [mailto:kristoff@...] Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 12:49 PM To: UniversalDigitalRadio@yahoogroups.com Cc: William Stillwell - KI4SWY Subject: Re: [UniversalDigitalRadio] Raspberry Pi D-STAR Gateway Hi William, I also have a friendlyarm. What distro are you running on yours? When using its linux native distro, I managed to get ALSA to work (which I need for my tests with gmsk modem), but getting anything else ported to it gives me all kind of issues). I also tried angrom linux which does have a lot of packages ported, but I couldn't get ALSA to work on it correctly. 73 Kristoff - ON1ARF
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"John D. Hays" <john@...>
A few common questions and answers.
Q. Who has Raspberry Pi in stock? A. Nobody. Sorry, I don't have a shortcut. You have to put your name on the supplier's list and wait. I put my name on the list right after the announcement.
Q. I see you are using an iPhone power module, how does it connect to the Raspberry Pi? A. The aftermarket iPhone power module "cube" converts AC (mains) to 5V on a standard USB port. The Raspberry Pi is looking for a micro USB connection for power. I happened to have a cable for my Kindle handy, just get something similar to http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004911E9M -- the nice thing about the USB connector is there are cigarette lighter adapters that do the same thing if you want to take it mobile.
Q. You said you made a few contacts, how did you get the AMBE chip connected? A. The Raspberry Pi is connected to the Internet via a LAN and is running the ircDDBGateway and GMSKRepeater daemons. I have a node adapter plugged into a USB hub which in turn is plugged into the Pi, this handles the transition to and from a radio (Yaesu FT-817 in this case, I will probably test against my Kenwood repeater and dvrrptr board soon). The radio acts as the RF gateway for D-STAR and I use D-STAR radios which contain the AMBE chip to talk to the radio as if it was a D-STAR repeater or "hotspot". I used both the ID-31AD and IC-91AD on a simplex frequency in the 70cm band. The contacts were made using DPLUS linking to REF001C, since there are usually stations monitoring there, reports were excellent from each station.
Q. Since I'll have to wait for a Raspberry Pi are there alternatives? A. G4KLX's software such as ircDDBGateway and the various repeater controllers are pretty agnostic when it comes to Linux distribution, most installs are on either Red Hat or Debian derivatives. They are well proven on x86 platforms. I was not the first to put them on an ARM processor and if you are using an EABI Armel build, it should run on a variety of ARM platforms such as Sheeva Plug, Beaglebone, etc. the main considerations are interfaces (USB and Ethernet) and processor performance / memory. You don't get the full 256MB of RAM on the Pi, but it seems to be fine, the footprint is pretty small but I wouldn't recommend going with less memory or fewer MIPS. On the Pi, I am not running the GUI, though it is available, it puts more demand on the processor, and I'm content with a command line. (Been doing Linux/Unix command line for 30 years.)
Q. So how do I get G4KLX's code running? A. You can download source from the ircDDBGateway and pcrepeatercontroller Yahoo! forums and either do a native build on the Pi or cross-compile.
I choose to cross-compile using a VM running Debian Squeeze on 2 cores of an AMD processor running 2.9 Ghz. each, with 8 GB of allocated RAM. This is considerably faster than native compilation and then I simply copy the files over to the Pi via the LAN. I used the Emdebian toolchain for this cross-compile build and got native libs using xapt. You will need to install development packages and libraries for wxgtk2.8 to build the gateway, plus portaudio19-dev and possibly libusb-1.0 to build the repeatercontroller. There are also changes that need to be made to the makefile to use the tool chain and to find the libraries and include files. Q. That's beyond my skill or seems like a lot of work, are there binaries that can just be installed? A. Yes and No. If someone has built binaries you might get them to send them to you. A tar of all of the binaries in the gateway package and the pcrepeatercontroller package total roughly 100MB without compression.
The right way to do this is to build a .deb install package. It doesn't look hard, but I haven't done it before and it would be really good to have someone that knows what they are doing create and maintain such a package (including updates). I could provide the needed information if there's a volunteer? (crickets chirping in the background)
If there were such a package, binary installs would take the form of: aptitude install ircDDBGateway aptitude install Repeater Q. So you are building a radio that will incorporate this functionality on its own ARM processor, why are you showing us how to do this on a $35 computer?
A. I and my company are able to build this radio platform, in a large part, because talented people have shared so much in the form of Open Source. It's important to contribute back to the community to see what other great innovations can grow from it. We see a great demand for the UDR56K and think that its a good value, so we hope lots of folks agree and will buy our radio for these types of applications in a nice integrated system -- time will tell.
John D. Hays K7VE PO Box 1223, Edmonds, WA 98020-1223
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Kristoff Bonne <kristoff@...>
Hi,
On 13-06-12 21:14, John D. Hays wrote: Q. Since I'll have to wait for a Raspberry Pi are there alternatives? I did a quick test yesterday. The pcrepeater code compiles out of the box on a pandaboard running ubuntu. (Concidering Jonathan's track record, I didn't expect anything else. :-) ) However, the pandaboard (and beagleboard) might be quite overkill for this. Concidering its dualcore cortex ARM A9 and a additional DSP core, this is more the kind of device to use in a video or ATV enviroment. (unless you plan to run 8 D-STAR repeaters simultanous with a 100 Khz bandwidth radio :-) ) Hmm. I haven't done this neither but I can give it a try for the pandaboard/ubuntu. If it works, we can look at automating this. 73 Kristoff - ON1ARF
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