Maybe a future project given a bit of mo ... / 2012-02-11

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.