Possible to display ircddbgateway reflector?

All things relating to the Nextion Screen(s)
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va3dxv
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu May 07, 2020 10:06 pm

Possible to display ircddbgateway reflector?

Post by va3dxv »

Hi. I've had lots of fun designing and programming my own HMI. Big thanks to KE7FNS for the helpful info he's posted here.

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I'm wondering if anyone has come up with a good way to display the currently linked reflector from ircddbgateway? The reflector shows up when someone's talking but obviously that's just being passed through MMDVM while there's an incoming signal. I'd like to have it show up all the time on the main screen so I know what reflector I'm monitoring. I thought about just setting up a timer in the HMI to run a sh script that parses the Links.log file, but wondering if there might be a better solution than that? Thanks!
va3dxv
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu May 07, 2020 10:06 pm

Re: Possible to display ircddbgateway reflector?

Post by va3dxv »

Your design looks great, and I like your choice of colors and graphics.
Hey thanks very much, I'll post it up somewhere once finished.
It shows up on what? The Dashboard, or on a page on the Nextion, or what exactly are you monitoring?
I mean when someones talking it shows up in the t2 field on the D-Star page, but that's only when someones talking. I'd like to be able to make it show up on the main page when its sitting there idle so I know what reflector ircddb is currently linked to. It also shows up on the web dashboard, but I'm pretty sure that's just parsing the log file for it.
I definitely wouldn't run a timer. I try to avoid timers at all costs. I'm not a fan of those kind of shell scripts either. I'd just run some simple code based on the MMDVM.status.
Oh man I've got a bunch of I put in timers. Whats the preferred solution? I couldn't figure out which status value was the linked reflector.
va3dxv
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu May 07, 2020 10:06 pm

Re: Possible to display ircddbgateway reflector?

Post by va3dxv »

Ok I see what you're suggesting, thank you for that info. I hadn't thought of doing it that way. That looks like it would be a "last heard" kind of thing, filling that field with the last reflector it saw. That isn't quite what i was going for but it looks like that could be a solid alternative if there's no other way.

The thing is that field is only populated by an incoming signal, right? Until a signal is received I don't think MMDVM knows anything about the connected reflector? I know ircDDB stores information about whats connected in a log file, Links.txt (the file is empty if not linked)...so I thought there might be a way to get NextionDriver or MMDVM to send that data to the display. So your way would populate that field based on incoming signals. If I change reflectors, it won't update that field until someone transmits again, and it also wouldn't know if a connection to a reflector exists at any one moment or if it dropped... also a local RF signal going into the hotspot doesn't have that field populated, so if that was the last thing received, the field I create would be blank. I guess what I want really isn't possible to do in any efficient way... yet :)

Just curious about the S0 element, I assume MMDVM fakes a touch on that element when it loads the page? or is it continuously? Why not just put the same code in the page initialization event? I see S0 talked about but I'm not fully clear on its function as I haven't got any in my setup. Thanks a bunch for your advice.
va3dxv
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu May 07, 2020 10:06 pm

Re: Possible to display ircddbgateway reflector?

Post by va3dxv »

Does the Nextion display the text of which reflector you are connected to all the time, or does it only populate when it gets traffic from the network.
No it doesn't, but that was my intended goal. It only populates it on signals coming in from the network, not even from RF (since the radio isn't transmitting any reflector info, just its own MY/UR headers).

But this is all great insight, thanks a bunch. I moved all my functions off of a timer and created an S0, and was happy to find all the code still works without changes. I'm not sure I've got the skills to change anything in NextionDriver though. If it was Python I'd have a chance!

Your suggestion about the variable worked out good, so last heard reflector can now be seen on the main page, and I made one for the LH callsign too. Small glitch in that since the DStar.t2 field is empty on RF signals, if i go from say REF001 to REF030 for example, and make a call, and I get no answer, it goes back to the main page and still shows REF001 because nothing got written to the variable. I think I can get around this with an if statement to make it write something if it's an RF signal... since DStar.t0 leads with either an R or N if its RF or network. So thats not really an issue.

I have an unrelated question if you've got the patience, My CPU speed (t21) and cpuload that I have on the main screen both update in "real" time, but the temperature (t20) only gets updated on a page refresh. Is that expected behavior?

Thanks for your time!
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