I'm involved with a club who has recently deployed a three voting receiver setup using RTCM's and Motorola CM-200 RX only radios. The transmitter site doesn't have a receiver anymore.
Currently, a less than ideal situation exists, wherein the master RTCM is not connected directly to the repeater. Instead, it's going through a second node, which is connected to an Arcom RC-210 through a Masters Communications URI driving a Yaesu DR-2X repeater.
When a high connection count exists (over 140 connected nodes,) local traffic from the voters is broken coming back to the repeater.
Note: I advised against setting things up that way, but there was a time crunch.
Ideally, the RTCM's TX should modulate the repeater directly, and act as the controller. At least, that's how I'd do it, especially since the RTCM can generate a PL, which would eliminate the need for the ADR.
They, for some reason, want to keep the RC-210 in place.
So, my question is, what configuration of the RTCM and repeater controller would be optimal for feeding the controller with the RTCM master?
Hang time and courtesy tones have been disabled on the repeater controller, so ASL can handle those functions. I eventually want each voting receiver to have it's own courtesy tone.
Currently, I know that port 2 of the Arcom is set up to send and receive audio with no pre/de-emphasis. Since the current node isn't modulating the repeater directly, that works fine.
The RTCM's are de-emphasizing audio, as they should.
I just want to make sure we are not sending pre-emphasized audio from the RTCM master to the RC-210, since it won't be modulating the repeater directly.
The "master" RTCM is the timing source for the Allstar computer. It should be on the same LAN segment as the computer to minimize latency for obvious timing reasons. Connecting the master RTCM to a radio is optional.
In your case connecting the master RTCM to a RC-210 is fine. I wouldn't do it that way either. But people like what they know. Lots of RTCMs are connected that way. That won't work for voting as discriminator audio is needed and not likely to be passed through the RC-210. But as this RTCM is for the repeater transmitter only that shouldn't be a problem.
The 140 connection problem is some other problem as RTCM have no role in connecting nodes. They are only peripheral devices; basically just fancy sound cards with added features for voting.
Like you said, getting the pre-emphasis right is the primary concern interfacing the RTCM to your RC-210 repeater controller.
Yes, the master RTCM, which is on the same LAN as the ASL3 node, will be a transmitter only. There are no receivers at the repeater site.
The 140 connection problem ( very popular net) only has to do with the current system in that the RTCM is currently passing through the node that is being clobbered by all those connections and the related telemetry before it hits the repeater, which is just all kinds of bad, as it breaks local traffic. It's not the RTCM's fault.
The node in question is a HamVoIP node. Long story as to why HamVoIP is being used, but eventually this won't be the case.
So, while this sounds like a great bunch of fixes, and I'm happy to beta test (haven't been doing that lately,) I can't do much in regards to this particular thing.
ASL3 is on another node handling the RTCM.
If the problem you're having is what we fixed, then it's an issue on the ASL3 side not the HamVOIP side. Upgrading your ASL3 node would fix the interop problem -- if it's the problem we fixed.