Repeater Controller..........the beginning

So its been quite a while since I posted. The Home Automation project isnt dead, in fact its on version 4 and works nicely. I finally was able to mock up the engineering network and everything worked as it should. The light controls function as they should, along with the heating and cooling controls. What I have done is placed the project on hold, until I can purchase the land and get the house construction going.

So...I turned to another project that I had been mulling around for a while. I have always been interested in the digital mode of my other hobby, Amateur radio. I especially like the UHF and the higher bands. Since there seems to be little in the way of activity in my area, I thought I would see about building a repeater and linking it to the rest of the world through VOIP, voice over IP. I made some observations and settled on using the Allstar Link network.

The first part of the project I obtained a node number and got a local node working. This was a computer only node, no radios were used. Just using my android phone, I was able to talk to people all over the world on the network, this had possibilities. I thought if I could incorporate this into a repeater and use the network to get local amateurs to use the network, then I could increase interest in the bands...........so the planning began.

The repeater need not be powerful. Something on the order of 20 to 30 watts, in a decent location with either piped in internet ( Ill get to that) or internet service at the site will work, I can do both. It was to be a local repeater, not something that covered 50 miles in every direction, but something manageable, something that didnt bust the bank, and something that one person could design, build in stages, have ease of maintenance, and be micro controller(MCU) controlled.......

I already have the computer node working. The node in fact is located on the Allstar Network, as Node 41144. Currently there is no RF attached. I wanted to test out the node, and make sure in fact that it was reliable. In the last 9 months, its basically been off twice, both of these were power outages at my house, and it required human intervention to bring the node back online. Ill correct that problem once the controller is built.

Most Allstar repeaters dont have a controller at all, or they use the node computer in conjunction with the existing repeater controller to make the system work. Some Allstar repeaters dont even have Allstar node located at the repeater site, some are linked to Allstar via a link node. I wanted everything together, which brought up an interesting point. With the Allstar node, you can use the node itself as a repeater controller, and they work well. I wanted to incorporate the node and a repeater controller in one, and make the brains of the system using an Arduino. The reason I wanted to do this, is several fold........

    1. If the Allstar node were to fail, the repeater would still function without the VOIP link
 
    2. I could remotely control the repeater over the network using MQTT

    3. I could monitor almost anything using MQTT, like power supply voltages, temperature, radio     heat sink temperature, outside weather conditions and alike

    4. Anything arduino controlled is just plain fun to mess with........

With all of these points in mind I sat down to design what I wanted and to see where the potential bottlenecks are, design issues, and firmware problems would be. All of these issues had to be worked out, so the fun begins.