Got the Retevis RT85 radios today and they work amazingly well considering they’re only $25 each. I wouldn’t want to use one as my main HT, but they’re perfect for node radios. Audio quality seems very good so far, can’t tell any difference from an FT-530. Thus it’s now official: A very good quality, full-duplex AllStar node can be easily built for under $200.
The RT85’s are easy to open up and the Green LED could have a wire soldered on to bring COS out. That does require some precise soldering though. For now the usbradio vox mode works fine for me, though it can require a bit of fine tuning. Also ASL has a hardcoded 2000mS voxhangtime but I put in a pull request to make that configurable, and I set it to 500mS in my usbradio.conf files.
Making a cable to go from a DB9 to 2x 2.5mm plugs and 1x 3.5mm plug can be a bit of a hassle if you want it to look pretty, or, just pick up an old DB9 cable, cut it in half and splice on some aux cables. That’s a lot easier than soldering onto DB9 and mini-phone plugs. With a small terminal block there’d be no need to solder anything and the whole node can be built with off-the-shelf cheap easily obtainable parts.
Wiring - DRA-30 to Kenwood & Retevis, TYT, QRZ, etc. HTs:
DB9 Pin 1 --- TX HT 3.5mm Ring (Tx Audio)
DB9 Pin 3 --- TX HT 3.5mm Sleeve (PTT)
DB9 Pin 6 --- TX HT 2.5mm Sleeve (Ground)
DB9 Pin 5 --- RX HT 2.5mm Tip (Rx Audio)
DB9 Pin 9 --- RX HT 2.5mm Sleeve (Ground)
73, NR9V