Maybe a future project given a bit of money and a lot of spare time:
receiving D-STAR gmsk signals with a
Funcube dongle pro or other (software) radio and decoding them in software to show the active
callsign and routing information. The audio will not be available as D-STAR
uses the AMBE codec. But the on-air metadata will be quite interesting to
decode and process. Maybe also available by linking to a repeater or reflector
via the IP protocols and receiving the metadata.
After all other projects, and needs a lot of round tuits.
Update 2012-02-13:
sometimes these thoughts nag and nag, and you do a few google searches, find
some software which may do the bit about linking to a reflector and
receiving metadata, and some hacking in the source later:
DSTAR: STARTED my=PA4YBR P,sfx=FRED,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=REF017 A,rpt2=PI1BSM A,streamid=96,36
No audio, but the metadata is there. I took the
dplus_client_linux
from
D-star open source / Dextra and modified the source a bit: it doesn't
try to talk to the AMBE decoder anymore and it doesn't try to log in to
the reflector anymore. But reporting as an active connection without
logging in is enough to receive the data. I configured it to connect to
REF017A, the Dutch d-star reflector 017 Alfa which is home to Dutch
D-star users. I now get interesting output:
DSTAR: STARTED my=PD2AWD ,sfx=E880,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=REF017 A,rpt2=PI1DRA B,streamid=84,245
Started receiving audio from dstar
Skipping concurrent: my=PE1GDF ,sfx=2820,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=PI1POH B,rpt2=REF017 B,streamid=21,138
DSTAR: stream complete
DSTAR: STARTED my=PD3JHN ,sfx=PORT,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=PI1UTR G,rpt2=REF017 A,streamid=15,127
Started receiving audio from dstar
Skipping concurrent: my=PE1GDF ,sfx=2820,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=PI1POH B,rpt2=REF017 B,streamid=142,95
Skipping concurrent: my=PE1GDF ,sfx=2820,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=PI1POH B,rpt2=REF017 B,streamid=67,222
DSTAR: stream complete
Update 2012-02-14:
Added timestamps to the output so I can get an idea of the activity:
DSTAR: STARTED my=PA0LVL ,sfx=E80D,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=REF017 A,rpt2=PA0LVL C,streamid=139,189
2012-02-14 19:47:19 Started receiving audio from dstar
2012-02-14 19:47:23 stream complete
DSTAR: STARTED my=PA1MBW ,sfx=PIET,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=PI1UTR G,rpt2=REF017 A,streamid=71,23
2012-02-14 19:47:28 Started receiving audio from dstar
2012-02-14 19:47:29 stream complete
DSTAR: STARTED my=PA1NJK ,sfx=IC92,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=PI1HGL G,rpt2=REF017 A,streamid=66,74
2012-02-14 19:47:41 Started receiving audio from dstar
2012-02-14 19:47:47 stream complete
DSTAR: STARTED my=PE1KZU ,sfx=E92D,ur=CQCQCQ ,rpt1=REF017 A,rpt2=PE1KZU C,streamid=47,202
2012-02-14 19:48:39 Started receiving audio from dstar
2012-02-14 19:48:41 stream complete
Quite busy. I was hoping to have audio via one of the audio streams from
reflector 017 Alfa so I could match those with the status messages
but none is available at this moment.
I also found where the user messages and other text streams in the d-star
protocol go:
PE1KZU BERT JO22XT
VIA DVAP
which match messages in
Reflector 017 dplus dashboard. Well: they don't show what the originating callsign
is.
Update 2012-02-15:
The
REF017A
live audio feed is back on-line, so I can view the control traffic and
listen to the audio at the same time. Well, not exactly at the same time:
there is a delay.