So I have an uhf Motorola quantar and I purchased my kit to connect to the raspberry pi through repeater builders website.
Everything works well OFFLINE. The moment I connect and power on the pi with allstar, the repeater suddenly develops a squelch crash. Repeaters an unknown signal lets the repeater, you hear a squelch crash and it cycles again. The repeater will do this for up to a full minute and then give up.
What causes this? I can see turn off the pi and immediately the repeater qilll act as normal. No squelch crash no nothing. Just a normal repeater.
What do you mean by "suddenly develops a squelch crash"? Normal traffic has a squelch crash at the end? Or the repeater is being continuously keyed up and transmitting noise?
Repeater will key and have a cycle of what seems to be squelch opening the receiver causing it to key, make a noise of what is effectively a squelch crash and then do it again. Unplug or turn off the pi and issue goes away
If you look at simpleusb-tune-menu, are COR and/or CTCSS being triggered in when this is happening? You could have the signal line backwards. I'm not sure which way a Quantar signals. Something also tickles my mind that some people have had to build a buffer circuit for it? Search through the forums here for Quantar. There's a lot of Quantar users here so someone will likely chime in too.
Jason-
No need to make a buffer. see attached. I go from MRTI connector (DB25) to the RA4x. Works great, no wildcard tables needed. Uses the squelch detect and PL decode internal to the Quantar. No muss, no fuss. In the usbradio.conf:
If increasing the COS delay (or whatever...there's a setting to ignore COS after PTT) doesn't work...then I would say you need to try adding some buffering or filtering to your interface.
You...probably do need a buffer to prevent logic signals from going crazy. Your schematic just shows straight connections.
Yes, more information is needed. I think you said earlier adding AllStar to the Quantar caused the squelch tail crash. Let’s do some trouble shooting to see why that is.
Normally, Quantars have next to no squelch tail (crash) on a strong signal even on radios with no reverse burst and a very acceptable squelch tail on very weak signals. Some cheap Chinese radios are the exception. Radios with reverse burst will have no squelch tail at all. This is one of the reasons repeater owners and users like Quantars. AllStar won’t change any of that.
To test you need a receiver to duplex and listen to your repeat signal/audio. The receiver is needed because your transmitter may transfer to receive slower than the squelch tail. Be sure to not desense the receiver by not getting too close with the transmit radio and use low power. You may hear two squelch tails. One when you unkey and then one when the Quantar unkeys. Do you hear good audio and acceptable squelch tail(s). If not let us know.
If we’re good so far we’ll need to make a change to either the Quantar or to AllStar. That’s because AllStar is default set to full duplex (as is the Quantar) which creates two repeat paths and a delay and echo. The repeat delay comes from AllStar processing and buffering.
Which you change has a trade off. The easiest quick fix change is to set duplex = 3 in AllStar’s rpt.conf file. The other fix is to set the Quantar up as a base station. This allows AllStar to mute DTMF but the Quantar will not repeat if AllStar or its computer fail. It also adds a delay where users may hear the last syllable of their own transmission when they unkey.
Then duplex = 3 is exactly what you want. It's the same as duplex = 2 but with no repeat audio.
From the rpt.conf comments...
duplex = 2 ; 0 = Half duplex with no telemetry tones or hang time.
; Special Case: Full duplex if linktolink is set to yes.
; This mode is preferred when interfacing with an external multiport repeater controller.
; Comment out idrecording and idtalkover to suppress IDs also
; 1 = Half duplex with telemetry tones and hang time. Do not repeat audio.
; This mode is preferred when interfacing a simplex node.
; 2 = Full Duplex with telemetry tones and hang time.
; This mode is preferred when interfacing a repeater.
; 3 = Full Duplex with telemetry tones and hang time, but no repeated audio.
; 4 = Full Duplex with telemetry tones and hang time. Repeated audio only when the autopatch is down.
Just saw this. It can be duplex= 2 or 3. Depends on how Quantar is setup in "RF Config" tab. If set as "base" then duplex=2, when set as "repeater" duplex=3. Also be sure to enable phone patch in two places under channel info and hardware config.