Node information

[WRTJ860]

Hey all. can anyone give me the direction for starting a Node? I have a sister that lives out in Arizonia, and she has a neighbor that is going to help her on her end.  Thanks, Ron

[WRKC935]

While it's specifically not my call, I don't believe that personal nodes are allowed on the system.  Has to be a repeater with reasonable coverage. 

That being said, how this is being accomplished is not some super secret thing that you can't have info on.  It's really nothing more than a IP PBX (Asterisk) running some additional software to allow it to communicate to radios.  That being said, Hams refer to it as ALL-Star link and there are tons of pages that will lay out how to do it with very cheap parts.  And you really DON'T need to be on a system.  You just need one end of it to have a public IP on the Internet so the other node can always find it.  Two nodes that are aware of each other that are programmed to connect to each other will do so without any additional servers.

Now that's out of the way, remember that this DOES use the Internet to provide connection between the nodes.  This system is no different.  Having expectation that it's going to work in the event of a disaster is setting yourself up for a serious disappointment.  So that that under advisement.

 

[WRTJ860]

thanks for the reply. i think we have just about everything ready on this end, now i don't know that much about it other than my radio will talk to a chip (in a raspberry) then be able to talk over the internet. From what im told there is some information you have to fill out then you get four numbers. i used the contact link on the home page and asked pretty much the same question, but with no response. so im kinda in limbo until someone points me in the direction so i can get the next step underway.

[KAF6045]

3 hours ago, WRTJ860 said:

thanks for the reply. i think we have just about everything ready on this end, now i don't know that much about it other than my radio will talk to a chip (in a raspberry) then be able to talk over the internet. From what im told there is some information you have to fill out then you get four numbers. i used the contact link on the home page and asked pretty much the same question, but with no response. so im kinda in limbo until someone points me in the direction so i can get the next step underway.

Properly, it will be talking to an RF board connected to the Raspberry-Pi, the R-Pi handles the internet side of things, packets from the RF board into (apparently) VoIP. Unless one has some sort of configuration that is using the native sound card (microphone/speaker connected to the R-Pi) and not using a radio at all (I think I saw that configuration mentioned in a 3 minute skim of the All-Star documents).