I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but is there currently a mechanism that can be used to stop a stuck Echolinker from timing everything out on a connected system?
I use an Echolink conference server (thebridge) and then connect echolink to that rather than hosting connections directly in ASL, so I can have transmissions sent to Echolink stop after seconds.
For whatever fantastic reason, the Echolink mobile clients not only don’t have a default TX timer, but they don’t even have the option. The desktop client does, the mobile ones don’t. It’s far too easy to start transmitting without realizing it, apparently, as I’ve seen it happen lots of times. If you can’t see the screen, and rely on a screen reader, such as Talkback on Android, or Voiceover on iOS, this gets even worse.
I have been asked to set up a node for a club, where it really doesn’t make sense to pay annually for the privilege of running your own conference server, and I don’t want to run into that problem again.
In all the years I have run ASL & echolink, I never see much progress with EL.
It is true that the mobile devices are and have been an issue.
For EL insists that they remain full duplex connections, so, when a user inadvertently forgets to ‘un-ptt’ they hear nothing and there is no timeout.
Sometime in 2014, I started to config this in this way to help resolve some of the issues and after the phone apps cam along in a high level of usage, it turned out to be a good thing.
So, what you want to do is create a private node to make the echolink attachment to and not you public node. This gives you great control.
You can ‘conperm’ that connection if you want to your primary node.
But being a private node, you can set a timeout on that private node.
As well as attach it to any or all the public nodes you wish it to be in access to.
The private node will timeout if you set the timeout timer for that private node, but set it lower than the rest of nodes you might have connected so it goes out before bringing your local network nodes down…
While it is a workaround in your instance, it still provides much more flexibility overall.
And if it should become a issue on the EL side, you can just disconnect it by command.
easy easy
That was my solution but you might come up with something better.
I use to only use EL for locals to have access to the repeaters but have really had little good use for it the last 7 years. It becomes more a issue for users that pay little attention to what they do. And they are not local anymore. The locals moved on to DMR, YSF etc.