forum.pistar.uk

Looking for someone familiar with using Pi-Star as the gateway with an Icom controller and repeater. Any configuration information is appreciated.

73
Terry
N8LN

Is there a document or YouTube documenting switching an ICOM D-STAR repeater stack (1 70cm) module and controller to Pi-STAR?
Dave N2KTO [email protected]
Thanks in advance.

Dave

I noticed that there seem to be no replies to this question, but I'm very interested in any information anyone can provide on this topic. We have a Module B & C repeater stack and have been interested in a good technical solution to implement and maintain a solid repeater site with full D-Star functionality on a raspberry pi. Or, should we just roll-back to a computer tower running CentOS and Icom-only software?
Thanks! 73

You'd be using ircddbgateway to talk to the controller. Im not sure anything else in pistar would make sense using it for this type use case.
Pistar is built around mmdvmhost (and dstarrepeater for gen 1 hardware) They are the star players but this type setup wouldnt be using either of them.

Ircddbgateway is the gateway program used with DSTAR mode and its one real advantage would be it allowing you to link what you have now to additional reflectors running DExtra, DCS and XLX, which is of course the obvs. advantage.


Sent via smoke signals from my SM-G935F M1DNS (Admin)

Basically youd want a 2nd network card attached to the pi. (USB to rj45) that would talk to the icom stack controller and the Pi's onboard netconnection would connect to the web.
It was a very long time ago when i set this up for a group here in the uk and its all a bit hazy now. Theres a section in ircddbgateway .ini that you need to configure for the 2nd network adptr to talk to the icom stack on its internal IP. Im not sure if thats available in pistar config pages but hopefully it is in the full edits page where you'd add that info manually.


But theres hopefully better people with better memories who might be able to give more concise help.

Sent via smoke signals from my SM-G935F M1DNS (Admin)

Thanks for the responses, Andrew. Yes, I'm aware that we'll be using two networks....I've already been experimenting with QnetIcomGateway with limited success and am trying to get my arms around the total solution space. The possibility that others might be using pi-star (D-Star Repeater option) was an attractive idea, but I thought I'd ask the question. 73
Keith

Hello all.

It may not be the best, but I documented what I could on my blog about how I did this. I'm also not convinced I have it fully configured as the ircDDB indicator is "OFF" on my dashboard.

https://www.zebrasrunningwild.com/2021/ ... and-d.html

Here's a diagram I whipped up yesterday to help out understanding how this works. It's helpful to think of two paths of communications. One between the RP2C-Pi-Star and the other is Pi-Star to the Internet.