Hello, I'll try to explain to the best of my abilities. Sorry if I make some typos, still recovering from some cold.
Raspberry Pi is a generic name for a family of cheap, little computer boards. They are initially designed to give kids around the world a better chance to get started with computer programming (like BBC computers) but electronics enthusiasts liked them so much that they have become the unofficial DIY computer boards for small gadgets. They are different versions of these boards now and they are all very much loved by "hacker" communities. (Please note that hacker is not a word to describe people who are using computer technologies for malicious intent but instead it is a word that originally described people who like to tinker with technical stuff, especially electronics to create new stuff, the word was kind of stolen and used incorrectly by media) They are very small computers that look like just a circuit boards (without a shell/box etc so you can see and touch the chips) and they can run very different operating systems from Windows to various Linux distributions to more gadget oriented RTOS OS etc. They also have a specially designed linux distro called Raspberry Pi OS which is kind of customized debian Linux. You can use these computers with a lot of different electronics hardware since they support direct I/O connections to its primary Cpu (to be technical it's a SoC not just a CPU but let's not go into too much the technical details now) This allows people to design and produce "HATs", which are other electronic boards that are designed to work with a Pi and directly connected to it. And here is the fun stuff. Since with a Pi, you have a capable computer, lot's of input/output capability to control and communicate with other electronic boards, you can do interesting stuff like connecting a radio board and controlling it via Pi. This for instance may allow you to control frequency of a transmitter, generate a signal using the computing capabilities of Pi and send that signal over the transmitter. Or, vice versa, receive a radio signal over a receiver, decode the signal and use it. You see where this is starting to go I think? So with a Pi and a specially designed radio board you can implement a digital radio repeater, an SDR, a multi protocol digital radio modes communicator and many many more interesting stuff. With this in mind, if you add a proper radio hardware to a raspberry pi, you can then create a kind of repeater that would connect to internet (Pis have wireless and ethernet connections depending on model) communicate with other digital repeaters over internet (using dedicated VoIP services) and transmit audio between themselves. And with a digital radio capability added to Pi, you can then transmit these audio communications to your handheld radio. So, basically with a handheld radio, closer to a Pi, you can transmit your voice, Pi will pick it up, and send it to a network of repeaters over internet, and other people close to those repeaters woul hear your message. (And the other way when they send their messages) That is the basics of it. Hope this helps! On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 3:00 AM Suggs, Marvin (KTRK-TV) via BVARC < [email protected]> wrote: > Can someone please explain how Allstar link works and how you can access > distant repeaters? What’s a raspberry pi? > Thank you, > Marvin N5RKW > > Sent from my iPhone > ________________________________________________ > Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club > > BVARC mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org > Publicly available archives are available here: > https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > -- Gokhan KORALTURK
________________________________________________ Brazos Valley Amateur Radio Club BVARC mailing list [email protected] http://mail.bvarc.org/mailman/listinfo/bvarc_bvarc.org Publicly available archives are available here: https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
