My ALLSTAR node system is currently stable and working.
So, in the meantime I’m researching my next project.
I can get my hands on a HRI-200. I don’t connect the HRI-200 to my FT-500, since I have no intention of tying up my radio in a simplex operation.
So, the first question is (and I think I know what the answer is):
Can I just connect the HRI-200 to my PC/Internet and use it as a Room? If it can, does it work analog, digitally or both (only need 1 room).
The second question is how I connect this to the ALLSTAR node/network?
I have such a setup, using an HRI200 in analog/mixed mode wired to a URI, which is connected to an ASL node (not ASL3, but it doesn’t matter too much in this case), with the URI connected to the 10-pin DIN coming off the back of the HRI-200 to the DB25 on the URI.
I have an old Dell laptop running the WIRES x software.
As far as ASL is concerned, the HRI-200 is just a regular analog radio.
A couple of problems with this approach, though it does work for a basic bridge:
No metadata is passed. Anything connected to the ASL bridge will show up as the call of whoever is running the HRI200 in that room. This really, really confuses people who only look at their displays, and don’t listen with their ears.
As this is an analog connection, repeaters and personal nodes on the other end need to have all the connections available for analog. If not, you’ll run into situations where people connect to WIRES x from their PCs and wonder why the audio is coming through their laptop audio instead of the Yaesu radio.
After all that, the audio isn’t that great.
I’m not really a Yaesu person, so I don’t remember what accessories are needed to make this connection. It’s an over-priced USB sound fob of some sort.
I’ve heard what happens when people connect using repeaters that don’t have this connection. Audio is basically just null in both directions, though the connection itself is successful. You can faintly hear the clock noise of some DAC somewhere that really wants an input on some systems, but that’s about it.
The HRI-200 was donated to me, otherwise I probably wouldn’t run it.
A better, though much more expensive way of doing this, requiring an HRI-200, a dedicated radio, such as an FT-M100, and a dedicated MMDVM hotspot would be to bring it all in through DVSwitch Server/MMDVM_Bridge using a YSF reflector, and Analog_Reflector. The HRI-200 hooked up to the Yaesu radio connects to WIRES x, the hotspot talks to the Yaesu radio in simplex mode and connects to the YSF reflector (even a local one), MMDVM_Bridge connects to YSF, sends AMBE data to Analog_Bridge, which sends to Analog_Reflector, which sends to ASL3 using USRP.
This would allow for metadata to pass, but uses a ton of physical resources. In my case, it’s simply not worth it for the tiny little bit of WIRES x traffic my system gets compared to everything else. It’s the least used mode on my system. The only Yaesu radio I own that is capable of WIRES x is an FT-70, and I haven’t turned it on in over two years.
On my setup, I use Analog Reflector, which is connected to ASL using USRP. From there, I run a combination of YSFReflector, MMDVM Bridge, MD380 Emulator, and Analog Bridge to connect that to Analog Reflector. Next, I have an MMDVM hotspot, which is a hat plugged into a Raspberry Pi running Pi-Star, and that is connected to my YSFReflector. On Pi-Star, there is a special config that I entered into the expert section that allows the hat to talk to a Wires-X node… this setting is called “RemoteGateway” and it’s set to “1” and it’s located under Expert > MMDVMHost > System Fusion on Pi-Star. Next, set the MMDVM hotspot to the same frequency as the Wires-X node and BAM! You have a connection between Wires-X and YSFReflector and Allstar.
I also use the same setup to bridge in the other digital networks too, with additional software needed for some of the other digital modes, but the idea is basically the same.