To change Allstar to use a # instead of * for the function character change these lines in rpt.conf. Reason this was done is because the repeater controller utilized * to initiate autopatch.

funcchar = # ; function lead-in character (defaults to ‘*’)
endchar = * ; command mode end character (defaults to ‘#’)

 

Another issue we ran into was we had the duplex mode in usbradio.conf set to 0 which only allowed the controller to tx or rx at any given time. Changing this to 1 allowed us to send DTMF commands to the controller when it was transmitting.

A new issue we have run into is that Asterisk will will not register with Allstar after a reboot.  You must go into asterisk -r and reload asterisk manually for it to connect.

 

asterisk -r
*CLI>iax2 reload

 

To check your IAX registration status you can use

iax2 show registry

 

A workaround for this to reload asterisk after the system starts.  It appears that the iax registration tries to take place in the wrong order and therefore does not make the connection.  Add the following to /etc/rc.local.  This will reload asterisk 1 minute after the system starts.

 

#Pause for a minute, andd then restart Asterisk

sleep 60
/etc/init.d/asterisk reload

exit 0

 

The last change I made recently was to have two of our repeaters automatically connect to our HUB on startup.  This way if the Pi loses power for any reason, when it restarts it will automatically reconnect permanently to our HUB.  The first thing you will need to do is add the permanent ilink command to your functions in rpt.conf.  The next available in my list was 76 and it will look like this (13 is the permanent transceive connection)

 

76=ilink,13

 

Next we will need to add the startup macro stanza also in rpt.conf.  I typically put this under the macro= stanza and it should look something like this.

 

macro=macro42546
startup_macro=*7842644
functions=functions42546