[asterisk-dev] [Code Review] Remove chan_usbradio and app_rpt.

[Steve Totaro]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 12:02 PM, Hans Witvliet <asterisk at a-domani.nl> wrote:

> On Fri, 2012-03-09 at 12:03 +0000, Paul Belanger wrote:
>
> > Ship it!
> >
> > Nobody else on #asterisk-users seems interested in maintaining this.
> >
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> I think there are certainly a number of ham's interested in it.
> But i guess they are not capable of doing so.
>
> Although the number of radio-amateurs world-wide is slightly decreasing,
> the use of digitized voice in that area is certainly interesting.
> especially the use of narrow-band codecs.
>
> But i understand your choise, with too litle volunteers and too much
> work.
>
> Kind regards, Hans
>
>
>
It actually goes way beyond HAM, there is a HUGE market for making
disparate Radio systems work together, both in the private and public
sector.

Say you have an ICOM repeater and I have a Motorola and the two are not
compatible, app_rpt and Asterisk to a small degree are the glue.

Also adding RoIP (Radio over IP) and the ability to link an kind of
repeaters anywhere in the world via POTS lines or RoIP is huge.

With the software, any computer can become a "radio" any phone can also
be auto-patched (careful FCC has strict limits on this), I can operate
several different repeaters in any geographic area and have them all
connected.  Mosul Dam or the IZ in Iraq is a perfect example.

Tower can be erected and repeaters installed and then connected via app_rpt
and Asterisk, using a POTS line or RoIP, these areas where T-Walls blocks
signals and in the case of Mosul Dam, the area to too great for good
coverage.

Now you can use the same frequency or different frequencies as the case
with with the IZ and Red Zone posts to blanket all of Baghdad with good
radio (five by)

Those are just examples I have done after playing around with HAM.

The thing is that systems that do this cost a huge amount of money and
asterisk, a URI, and app_rpt on the cheapest of boxen will do this very
simply.

It is the commercial side (in my opinion) that is the reason for not being
kept in Digium's repos.

The other push in the US is to have all police and emergency responders on
systems that work together, this can be done for a few hundred bucks rather
then tens of thousands.

Point is the HAM guys don't care, there is an ISO that runs CentOS 5.7 and
Asterisk 1.4.23pre that I just downloaded and installed on a VM, it
immediately found my USB URI and that VM is now a Repeater Controller with
the correct DB25 pinout for my MTR2000.

The README on the in the Asterisk source says "This is a patched version of
Asterisk to run with uClibc on an embedded mini-itx system and on an ACID
automatic install disk."

It will not be maintained by Digium.  I had to fight to get the source and
finally got the modified version tar.gz of asterisk, zaptel, and libpri.

It is a niche like I said.  A very profitable one beyond the fun and
learning factor of HAM.

Thanks,
Steve T
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-dev/attachments/20120309/584cc00d/attachment-0001.htm>