Does anyone know how to get an Android phone to work as an AllStar node – ie. so it IS the node, rather than it needing to connect to some other (eg. Raspberry Pi) type of node? This seems like it should be easy enough to do, but so far I have not been able to find anything online about how to do this. All examples I’ve seen seem to show only how to have for example DroidStar or DVSwitch connect to some other Raspberry Pi type of node that you own, but not how to run the AllStar software package directly on Android.
Since Android is a variant of Linux, and AllStar works on Linux, presumably it shouldn’t be too hard to run AllStar directly on Android. Granted, Android is managed by google and thus it probably has a lot of limitations/issues and is not as simple to use as a normal Linux device, but people have made plenty of other things run on Android so it shouldn’t be that hard to get AllStar to run on it. Once AllStar is then running on Android, it should then be pretty easy to use something like DroidStar or DVSwitch to connect to the [localhost] AllStar node. Thanks
Yes it’s possible for a Android device to connect to and receive calls from a AllStar node. You do not need a full version of Asterisk for that. Any AllStar node can be connected to or receive a call from. No, it is not available today. Connection to the AllStar network does not require a full AllStar node.
Hi, thanks for the reply, good to know it is possible. Can you clarify what you mean by “it is not available today”? How would you recommend being able to use an Android phone to connect to a public AllStar node (eg. similar to what you can do with the ASL web transceiver), and is there something you had in mind that might be available in the future to make this easier?
I can’t speak for other programs. DVSwitch Mobile (DVSM) today connects to AllStar node via the IAX protocol. This requires a pre-shared key (PSK) that is known to the DVSM user as well as the AllStar node owner. The next version of DVSM can connect to a AllStar mode without the need for the PSK.
The PSK authentication method works well but can be prone to setup errors and lack of understanding on how a AllStar node actually works. We wanted to try to remove those issues and make it easier for all.
As you mentioned, Web Transceiver (WT) mode which requires the calling connection provide a token that is issued on authentication. With this authentication method a node owner is supposed to be able to limit inbound connections via WT and to dis-allow the WT user to send commands to the AllStar node. When allstarlink.org authenticates a user for a token, it it supposed to check the Allow WT flag and the remote commands flag. As it happens, allstarlink.org returns the token even if WT is turned off on that allstarlink.org portal. DVSM looks up the destination node and checks for the flags. if WT is not enabled in the portal, DVSM will not connect to the destination node.
Last but not least is radio mode. In this scenario, DVSM looks like any other AllStar node. DVSM authenticates with allstarlink.org as a node and his IP is published to the node list. When a AllStar node receives a inbound connection request, the node is looked up in the published node list. If the calling node is in the list and the IP address matches the caller, the connection is accepted.
We are in alpha test today. Once we feel that the known bugs are squashed, we will announce the release of the next version of DVSM. All existing users will get the enhanced connection capabilities along with other added enhancements. We did not build this to replace a radio or to replace a AllStar node. We feel that adding the ability to connect to a AllStar node from a Mobile device is something that is needed in the ham community.