AllStarWx

 I have been working on a new application to announce live weather alerts over AllStarLink. 

Here is an overview of the application.  You can find more detail at https://www.weathermessage.com/allstarwx.aspx

AllStarWx is a comprehensive weather alerting and reporting system for AllStar and derived systems.   It uses the National Weather Service’s alerts web service to retrieve data.  This feed is based on the CAP v1.2 specifications. 

AllStarWx supports the following features: 

• On-demand forecasts.
• On-demand current weather conditions.
• Real-time weather alerts.
• Supports one or more counties.
• Announces new weather alerts when they arrive.
• Polite announcements.  It will wait for the receiver to be inactive.
• Uses Asterisk® Manager Interface (AMI) to send commands to AllStar.
• Creates a tail message that summarizes the active weather events.
• Tail messages can be incorporated into AllStar or played periodically.
• Uses static sound effect wave files to draw attention to the alert.
• Execute a script when entering weather alert mode.
• Execute a script when new events arrive.
• Execute a script when all events have expired.
• Runs as a background daemon.
• Changes to the configuration are automatically loaded.
• Features a test mode to check your configuration.
• Logging to review the operation of the application.

Allstar Link - Play net announcement

 This is a quick script to play a net announcement on Allstar Link.  If the repeater is busy, it will wait for 5 minutes for a break.  If there is no break - it will exit without playing.  You will need to create your custom announcement audio file using these procedures.

#!/bin/bash

stat=""

endTime=$(( $(date +%s) + 300))

while [[ $(date +%s) -lt $endTime ]]
do
        stat=$(asterisk -rx "rpt showvars 53431")

        if [[ $stat = *RPT_RXKEYED=0* ]]
        then
                break
        fi

        sleep 5
done

if [[ $stat = *RPT_RXKEYED=1* ]]
then
        exit
fi

/usr/sbin/asterisk -rx "rpt playback 53431 /root/fieldday2022"

This script checks to see if the repeater receiver is active before playing the announcement.  Replace 53812 with your node number.  The file netannounce is the recording that will be played.  It must be stored with the extension .ulaw in the directory of your choice.

Changing MTR2000 VHF 150-174mhz PA to 132-154

See this article on the Repeater Builder site for more information on making the 150-174mhz MTR2000 PA work in the ham bands. 

Here is a picture of the area where the two SMD resistors have to be changed to 15K.

These are the two SMD 1.5K resistors that should be removed.

Here is a picture with the parts removed.

This picture shows the new 15K resistors installed.  The new parts are slightly larger than the old parts.