Pi-Star Auto Keeper

I've had the opertunity to work with Mark (MW0MAU) on the control hardware for his D-Star node. Like many D-Star node keepers who are running small nodes with the MB6I** (intermittent) call NoV's - Mark has to dissable his node when he is sleeping or not actually physically in the proxymity of the node. The side effect is that many of these nodes are totally off-air when the keeper is not near-by.

The solution we have cooked up, keeps the node legally on-air 24/7! How great is that!

What happens is that the Pi controlling the node, detects the presesnce of the keeper, while the keeper is near by the node runs in unlocked public mode wit the full node callsign, and conects to the Icom G2 network for callsign routing. When the keeper is not near by, the controller changes its own configuration, flips to Mark's own callsign, disconnects from the Iom G2 network and connects to the open network instead, lock's itself for private use only. The major advantage of this setup, is that for those who only listen, the node is up on REF 001 C neaarly all the time.

We will be fully releasing the image for the Pi with "pistar-keeper" on it, and also releasing the keeper software seperately in due corse - once testing is compleated.