Repeater Voice Identification

D-STAR repeaters identify themselves after each transmission and often in each voice or data packet that traverses the repeater, so voice identification is unnecessary.

But if you like to hear talking repeaters, here is how to do it.

Record Voices

Somehow you will need to record the identifications that you will want to use. We've had one of the local users record the ID, but every time the repeater identifies, I think that he is talking. So we set out for something different.

While there are a couple of solutions, we chose to use synthesized speech from Nuance. As part of their RealSpeak product, they have an online demo. Check it out at http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/. Look for the Interactive Demo.

When you get there, I chose to use the RS Host Product with American English and a couple of the voices with the 8 kHz sample rate. In the Text field, I would use something such as:

This is the W-D-4-S-T-R digital repeater.

The dashes seem to put the proper spacing when speaking the letters, you can also try other punctuation such as commas or spaces. Then you hit the "Get WAV file" and store the file on your local hard drive.

Before doing anything else with it, play it and make sure that it sounds like what you want. Some letters or words don't always come out the way that you want to, so you might have to play with the input.

Convert to .dvtool

Once you get the recording as you like it, the cleanest way is to use the DVDongle to record the file to a .dvtool file. This is done by using the "record to file" option in the DVDongle software. The tricky part here is to make sure that the DVDongle software is using a mixer as a source, so that it can hear the output of the Windows Media Player. This is going to be a little different on the different versions of OS and the different sound card drivers that are installed. If you don't have a mixer, then check with a local PC guru to help you out. You might need to install the DVDongle on another computer that has a mixer available.

When you are ready, then select record to file on the DVDongle hit start and then hit play on the Windows Media Player. To keep from creating too much of a gap at the beginning, you want to do both of these very close to each other. I have a Media Keyboard that has the Media Player Play button on it. It was faster for me to click the mouse and hit the play button on the keyboard than to move the mouse between the DVDongle software and Windows Media Player.

Verify

After the recording has stopped playing, wait a split second and then hit the stop button on the DVDongle software. you now have a recorded message. Chose the Play file option to play it back. Make sure that the recording is clean with no R2D2 in it. If you get garbage, make sure that there are no other applications running on your computer and try it again. It could be possible that your system just isn't powerful enough to play and record at the same time. In that case find another computer to do the recording on.

Copy to Gateway Computer

There are a number of ways to copy the file from a PC to the gateway computer. Check with your friendly Linux guru for assistance.

Place the files in the /dstar/dv directory. You should already see some other files in the folder with .dvtool extensions. I wonder what the file repeaterunlinked.dvtool does?

Test Playing the File

Run the command

cp /dstar/dv/yourfilename.dvtool /dstar/tmp/play-c    (or play-b to play on 440 module)

This should play the voice on your C or 2M module. If it sounds okay, continue on. If the volume is to loud or the content unintelligible, go back to step 1 and try changing something.

Playing every hour

To play the file every hour from 8AM to 9PM, add the following line to your crontab

#00 8-21 * * * cp /dstar/tmp/yourfilename.dvtool /dstar/tmp/play-b.dvtool

Extra Credit Homework

If you breezed through the above steps and still left your self feeling empty, try the following.

Change the recorded phrase to something like

This is the W-D-4-S-T-R digital repeater system. The time is 4 PM.

Record it and move it to the repeater and enter a crontab for playing it at 4 PM. Also do that for all of the other hours during the day. Add individual crontab entries for each recording for each hour and you now have hourly time announcements.

From here you can just go crazy. Net Announcements, all sorts of things are possible.

Caveats

The playing of an announcement on an underpowered system that is linked might cause some timeout issues and drop the link. This is currently being investigated.

Don't put too many announcements on the repeater, you will probably drive users away, especially at night.

Announcements that are played when someone is talking are lost. If an announcement start playing then someone start talking, then the person's audio will be lost. There is no mixer as with an analog system.

 

Ed WA4YIH