Is it possible to make an RF node using an FT-991A?

been going round and round trying to set up my first node. I can make my node just a hub, but would like to have it connected to my FT-991A… problem is asl-find-sound doesn’t see the sound card.
I’ve verified that alsa can both record from the radio and play back to it… so it does work as a sound card on the raspberry PI

looking at the source for find sound, it looks like only a few sound card vendors are supported.

Failing using the radio’s built in sound card, what (low cost) setup will work for that radio?

You need a CM108/CM119-based sound adapter. For low cost but still a good one I recommend the Masters Communications RA-25.

I believe you have a misconception as to how this works.

I can’t speak to what sound card? the radio may have.
That is not likely a compatible item for what the ASL software was written to support.
But I could be wrong as I have no idea what the ‘sound card’ in the radio is or interfacing with it.

Assuming it is a compatible cmedia cm-xxx device, do you really want to carve into it to obtain cos signal ? or use a usb cmedia device to obtain cos/ptt etc.?

Likely the ‘built-in’ sound for the radio is more specific to the manufacture software and nothing really outside of that.

The ‘RADIO’ does not need to have a ‘sound card’ to work with ASL.
You need the following …radio COS, PTT, audio in/out
ASL uses a cm1xx sound dongle to extract all the above, but if you can manage signaling on your own trough devices like a parallel port on pc, and many sound dongles might work.
Most URI (usb radio interfaces) are based on the same or compatible.
Thus far. nobody has made a interface on a radio functionally compatible on the radio.

And that is a wonder at this point given the popularity.

thanks for the info. you believed right.

Stephen, not to discourage you in any way.
You can interface the radio as a asset to asl with many considerations.

Perhaps start here
https://wiki.allstarlink.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide

i recently set up an echolink link node on an vhf simplex frequency. easy peasy, and it allowed me so far to talk to a ham in georgia from my location in new york from my car mobile.

i simple mindedly thought i could somehow bridge in an allstar node to expand coverage, but after reading a lot tonight it looks like a rabit hole to me.

the prefered way would be to have the allstar node connect to the radio and config it to log in to echolink as my echolink link node. but the radio connection is not trivial.

echolink connected to a ft991a is trivial. but i see no viable way to bring my alstar node into the picture having the radio connected to echolink on windows

so my goal was to simply add allstar to an existing echolink rf link, and that looks impossible

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Not really impossible.
Just perhaps not in the way you had in mind.

ASL > Simplex radio interface
ASL > echolink network
ASL > ASLnetwork
ASL > Remote base FT991
ASL > DVSwitch > DMR,YSF,NXDN etc

By command, you can link any combination. Or all.
You can purchase a URI (usb radio interface) that makes quick work of the hardware side.
But do know there is a bit of a learning curve with Linux/Asterisk/ASL if you have no experience with any of it.

So I just hope to visualize for you the proper expectations for possibilities.
This stuff is like a bug that bites you and you become addicted.

But remember, remote base isn’t working plus I don’t thing ft991 is in the code.

GeorgeC W2DB

Ah, but rigctl supports it, and it can be scripted.
I have two frequency agile VHF/UHF remote bases using rigctl for control, and commands to control it from Allstarlink. It’s not as integrated as the remote base stuff was (probably, it’s before my time) but it works.

just an update. What I have had success doing today is setting up my allstar node as a hub node running on an AWS server (could not run it in my home network, because echolink doesn’t let 2 accounts log in on the same IP address).
I have it set up to use my callsign-R echolink account, and I can connect to it from my callsign-L echolink node which is attached to my radio.
I can also do the connection in the other direction connecting from the allstar node into my echolink link node.

I know it is somewhat working because, searching for some kind of allstar test node, I inadvertantly connected to an allstar hub in LA. I made a test call from my HT → my echlink connected base radio → my allstar side of echolink → to the other allstar node, and got a reply, I sounded loud and clear.

THat makes me happy enough for now… but I’m not sure all the audio is routed the way I would like it to. For instance if I playback hello-world, I expected it to make it’s way back to my ht. the cli showed it did try to play it, but I heard nothing on my end.

tried to get parroting to work by just turning it on in the conf file, and nothing comes back to my ht. I know the allstar node is hearing somehting because I get a log line in the cli when I let go of ptt on the ht

What I would lke to work is… have my echolink link node connected to the allstar node (as my -R callsign) and have people connected on the allstar side and people connected on the echolink side to all hear and talk to each other.