John,
Welcome to D-STAR. If you are looking to tie into the D-RATS
technology for purely data uses, it is flexible enough to allow you to
use a variety of mechanisms to interconnect, including a radio on each
end, AX.25 KISS, and other mechanisms. If you are just interested in
the slow data, then D-RATS is a great program but you would probably
find other solutions that are worth looking at -- however, if you want
both Digital Voice and Data (DV/DV-Data) then D-STAR becomes much more
interesting. If you go outside the Icom product line, and like doing
a little homebrew, putting up a repeater doesn't have to be that
expensive.
There are a couple of projects you should get to know.
The pcrepeatercontroller - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pcrepeatercontroller
it contains a D-STAR repeater controller that handles the GMSK
encode and decode using a cheap soundcard in a Windows or Linux
computer and can talk to gateway software (Icom's G2 and KI4LKF's G2
gateway software - I am not to the point of testing this yet, but the
support is in the code and others report some success). It also
requires a Velleman K8055 board. If you have access to radios with
good discriminator and modulator access, this software would make
building a less expensive repeater possible. (He also has similar
software for an end node.)
The GMSK node adapter projects - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gmsk_dv_node/
which includes a hardware GMSK solution and is used by the "Hot
Spot" http://W9ARP.com/HotSpot/ to get you into the network.
On Oct 26, 2009, at 10:58 AM, lla2qaa wrote:
Therefore ... I was wondering if there is anyone who has/could set
up a connection using the D-Rats repeater software to their local D-
Star repeater and the internet, allowing people like me, without a
dongle to join the D-Star fraternity using just the IC-E92D's slow
data and a laptop.
I
John D. Hays
Amateur Radio Station K7VE
PO Box 1223
Edmonds, WA 98020-1223 VOIP/SIP: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
