The Doug Hall RBI-1 is a serial device but is NOT rs232.
I made a program in a controller years ago (90’s) so I do understand how to talk to the interface as a programer but knowing it was already built in to the app_rpt software, I could not find it documented anywhere.
If you have hooked this up to a traditional controller, you know it has
a “serial data” line, “serial clock” line (sometimes called a strobe line) and a “reset line”.
You will need to use the parallel port of your computer to talk to the RBI-1
That parallel port will need to be a built-in port or a add-on card but not a usb converted parallel port. They do not seem to support pin punching in Linux.
Pin-2 is the data line
Pin-3 is the clock/strobe
Pin-4 is the reset line (not required but suggested)
I had originally thought that I needed to assign the pins by declaration in the set-up but could not find that in the source code (could be there?) This is the default state in any case.
If you currently use the parallel port pins for PTT on your nodes, you will need to move them above PP3 (pin4) . Don’t forget to change the settings for those PTT changes in usbradio/simpleusb if you move them.
Also, you need to set a few things in rpt.conf for the node to use it.
These settings go in the node stanza of the node that will have control.
remote=rbi ;
iobase = 0x378 ; the base address of your parallel port in hex – most common “378”,278,3BC
And of course, define a remote command structure for tuning it in the node stanza.
Also see Cop Commands.
There are many ways to customize this operation depending on needs.
It seems to me that I spotted a few errors in the source code but did not take notes when I patched and re-compiled it.
If you do the following to declare the node as a remote base,
29261 = radio@127.0.0.1/29261,NONE,y ; y=remote base
You will only have one connect at a time. Something to think about in your scheme.
You may perhaps want to just limit connects to your primary node only or several nodes and not declare it as a remote with the “,y“. You may also not want to registrar it at allstar.org and if that is the case, comment out the node registration in iax.conf but leave that line (above) in rpt.conf for your ability to connect to it.
One config I had used, since all were on the same server and it was never going to be controlled by a outside node was to define the parallel port and remote base commands on the repeater node and only connect to the remote base node for the audio connection. Doing it this way keeps you from the need to connect to your remote base node in control mode. That can have other implications in your set-up so be sure to think that through before you do it. I mention it for those that may benefit from it.