E1167: Getting Started in ALLSTAR with the Ham Radio Crusader - podcast episode cover

E1167: Getting Started in ALLSTAR with the Ham Radio Crusader

Jul 28, 202314 min
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Episode description

I invited Freddie Mac from the @HamRadioCrusader channel to make a video that would post to my channel. Here it is. Today Freddie gives you a little background about himself and shows us how to setup a new Allstar Node for your home. Let's take a look!

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Transcript

The Ham Radio two point zero audio podcast rip. Thank you for downloading and listening to this podcast. So basically what I do is I take all the audio clips out of my videos and upload them to spreaker and then from there they're spread out to iTunes and SoundCloud and now Amazon Audible as well. But I want to welcome you and thank you for joining the audio section of this

series on Ham Radio. I hope you enjoy it, and I would appreciate you leaving us a comment or a review on whatever podcast service you're listening from. Thank you in seventy three. I hope you enjoy it. Hello everyone, it's Freddie Mack, your Ham Radio Crusader and I'm back with another video. But I'm on the wrong channel, that's right. Jason Johnston over at Ham Radio two point zero asked me to make a video and introduced myself to the rest of you. Well, it's like I said, I'm Freddie Mack.

My real name is Freddie McGuire. All of folks call me fred Freddie Mack. Kind of stuck. I've been here for every since so I have been in law enforcement the last thirty three years and I am retiring. I got my Ham ticket in nineteen ninety eight, but I had a family to raise, several one of five kids and I have about ten plus grandkids, ten grandkids. I've got some monearies in there. But nonetheless, I'm retiring in like thirty two days, and I'm king a crusade to get back to

Ham Radio and make a contribution. I love Ham Radio. I got away from it for a while, not so intense as I used to be, because it costs a lot of money sometimes sometimes it takes a lot of time, and I just couldn't sacrifice at all with career and family. So I'll let it take a back seat for a while. But guess what, I'm making my way back thirty two more days. We're gonna hit the ground running. I want to thank Jason Johnston Case five HWB Ham Radio two point zero

for this opportunity. Thank you. Nonetheless, i want to talk to you today about all Star. I'm about to start a series of videos from beginning to finish about how to build your own home all Star node. And you can do it out of a two way radio or a Raspberry pie with a pie hat board on it. That's a radio board. And I'm going to walk you through all of that here in just a little while. But All Star is what's bringing me back more than anything. I don't get me wrong.

I enjoy the digital modes. I truly do have a lot of fun with that. Analogs my first love, and all Star could bring you back that. Back in the day, we dabbled with echo link our Ham Radio Club did and it wasn't bad, but it was the sound quality was kind of poor, and the constant announcements and folks from China and other countries that didn't speak English connecting up and manipulating airtime got to be a big hassle, and we just kind of let it go. All Star comes along, I

don't know how long ago, long enough and makes everything more convenient. The sound quality is awesome, the features set is amazing, and the control that you have over your own node is outstanding. It's a second to none in my opinion. Nonetheless, and this series of videos that's to come we will cover that. But I want to give you some basic components of things that you may need or will need if you want to build your home node out of a mobile radio. Now I'm going to show you some of the basic

components that you need to build your own home all Star node. I like to start with. My favorite radio currently is the TYT th nine thousand D. It's a simple little radio, single band. This one is VHF. I got a really good deal on it used I've already tested it. It is working. You can also use and there's tons of these laying around the internet all over eBay, the Motorola Radius GM three hundred or the Max Track

three hundred. I think sometimes they're just called max Track. But as long as they've got that's sixteen pen accessory poured in the back, but it usually has an accessory connector sometimes it looks a lot like this. As long as it's got a sixteen pen and it's a functioning radio, you can you can do several things. You can either build a cable like this one and that

cable fits right into the back of the radio. This twenty five, This dB twenty five end will fit right into a DMK engineering Uri XB sound fob. I'll show a picture of that here in just a moment. I have one, but it's actually an operation and I want to demonstrate my Allstar notes. So you can also go to Repeater builder dot Com and buy one of these little beautiful things. It's called a rim maxtrack. It will also work on the GM three hundred and it plugs right into that sixteen pin connector.

The other end is a USB that plugs right into your Raspberry Pie and you load your sd car up with all Star os, which we will cover in the coming videos, and once it boots up, it will talk to the sound card, which will talk to the radio and control it. So that's another option for a sound card. Scott Zimmerman makes these sir stinking awesome. They're worth every penny and they run around in fifty fifty five bucks. I think you can also visit Techno by George dot Com. I've covered him before.

He makes this little beautiful thing. This is the ARA one plus. He makes an RA Dash one and an ARA Dash one plus. This one has three lights on it, one to detect COS, the other one for red PTT, and the green one is a heartbeat that blinks to let you know that it's communicating with the Raspberry Pie. It comes with these two little gems. This is the USB plug goes into the U goes into the Raspberry Pie. This end plugs into here and goes to your custom made interface cable.

I have an a Linko cable here that would have to be rewired just a little bit for the T Y T T H nine thousand d. The reason I picked this now is because these little sound fobs are wired identical to the DMK Engineering Urix, but they're only fifty seven dollars and ninety cents, where the uri X is one hundred and nineteen dollars four. Shipping may include shipping to any licensed ham But and they work really good, Don't get me wrong, they rock and roll, but these are little cheaper, and you

know I'm on a budget. Fixing to be retired, fixed incoming. All you'll need these sound cards, you'll need a radio, you'll need an interface cable, and you'll need a Raspberry pie. Wow, did we ever think this was going to be so hard to get this time in our lives?

When COVID hit and created shortage after shortage, the silicone chip shortage really hit home because these things that we picked up for thirty five bucks here and there without worrying about them ever being in stock, disappeared and now Pie four one megabyte is almost one hundred bucks I'm sorry a gig a RAM, but the pipe, the Pie two, I'm sorry. The Pie four two me two megabyte. Two gigabytes a RAM are one hundred bucks and more all over eBay

and dad Gemmith. That's a tough price to pay. I can also have a Pie two. You can run an all Star node off of Pie two, but you want to run it with minimal resources because you can load up the extra extra modules of all Star, and a Pie two will start to struggle. It only has a half a giga ram as it is, so it's it's processor is a little slower, so you don't really want to overload

it too much. A Pie three. I've got one on running mode running a node in about twenty miles away, and it's a Pie three and it does a DMR bridge with DV switch. It's amazing. It works really good. Occasionally I got to reboot it. I mean, it's just the nature of the beast. But recently got my hands on a couple of Pie fours and I'm starting to convert those out because I really want to put a workload on, as it were. Once you get your all Star node up and

running, and we will cover setting up the software. We will cover how to ssh into your all Star node pie your Raspberry Pie where hand VoIP runs. I only know how to set up hand VoIP version of all Star. There is the ASL version of all Star, and don't get me wrong, there's probably not a thing wrong with it. I've just never used it. I've seen it a few times, and I know it's really good if you're

going to set up a radiolist node on a server. But ham VoIP is the one that I love because it's the one that I learned first, and I know it's ends and out, and I know the features I can set up. The beautiful thing about these is once you get them set up, you don't have to worry about them that much. My lights dimmed when I keet up the radio. That's my all Star node, and I also have this little beauty. Let's switch back over here and take a look at the

Shari pie hat you. This is an amazing little device I invention. For lack of a better word, this is a Raspberry Pie four and it has on the GPIU pens right on top. Let's say this for instance of this top cover wasn't here there's a radio board that locks right into these GPIOs. And you've got a wire in one wire for USB power. Why that's why there's a plug in this USB hole. Uh, you wired it around and take it underneath. There's just two solder joints you have to make. Not

a big deal. Let's talk about how to control your all Star node once it's implemented. It has a built in web server so that you can access through your browser and interface to view your settings and your node and see what its current state is, and then you can log into it and control it. So let's go here and this sight one dot two zero three is my

all Star node interface called Superman. This is Superman two. Superman stands for Supermonitor, but the first one that you set up is actually called Supermon. There's the current version. There's actually a version seven now, I believe, And once you log in looks as something like this. Now you've got control buttons up here. You can switch your note your different nodes. I have one public node my five eight one seven six on this particular setup, and

this setup has two private nodes. Now there's also Superman too. I've got it zoomed in right now for purposes of the video, but you can come across the top here and put in your own custom website links. I think Superman has it as well. Yeah, but Superman two does as well. And we've got Superman, We've got Superman two. We've got to get radios, sound card interface, cables. All Star can join you to the world. All Star is a wonderful way to keep in touch with a lot of

folks and ham on and play radio. It's great and it has a lot of awesome features for day to day use. But I'm the guy that's been in Ham radio for a while. I'm not a expert by any means. But if you want to do MCom by all you better learn some HF and you better have a nice pototype rig set up so that you can run your rig anywhere, portable antenna, portable power, and be ready to go. That's just the way I look at it. I'm not there yet, but

I'm coming, world, I'm coming. We'll cover a lot of things in these series of videos that's coming up. I want to thank Jason Johnston Ham Radio two point OKC five HWB for this opportunity to be on his channel, and I hope you got something out of this video because I love All Star, I love amateur radio, and I love my amateur radio friends, which is all y'all. Ham Radio Crusader is about a guy who's crusading himself back to Ham radio and I want to make a contribution to the hobby. So

here I come, World, Here I come. This is Katie five Ham, you your Ham Radio Crusader, signing off seven threes Ham on

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