Repeater Controller

The BATC ATV Repeater Controller uses a Raspberry Pi 4 as a fully-featured, but simple-to-construct, ATV repeater controller. The design is intended to be used with an HDMI Video switch, but can also be used with older composite video designs.

The RPi will control a video switcher either by Infra Red or GPIO pins and will generate a carousel of images. On receipt of a valid signal from, for example, a Ryde receiver, it will switch to that input - when the receiver closes, the logic will play a key sequence, dekey the tx and go back to the carousel.

Every repeater is different and this is designed as a core logic that can be used as the basis for an ATV repeater. The design is flexible with a large number of parameters in an SSH config file so that users can configure it to meet their own needs.

Initial design and construction information will be published here to enable collaborative development, but will be subject to change as the project develops.

Customisation

While this software is designed to work "out of the box" it will need to be configured for each individul repeater (with callsign at the very least). Most customisation will require the careful editing of the text file /home/pi/atv-rptr/config/repeater_config.txt; following this, the repeater will need to be rebooted (although you can just type "restart" at the ssh command prompt for testing). Some real-time control is possible using the ssh Console Menu (type menu at the ssh command prompt), but the configuration file is too comprehensive for all functions to be edited from a simple menu.

Software

An early version of the software (not yet ready for use, but good enought for shack-based testing) can be found here: https://github.com/BritishAmateurTelevisionClub/atv-rptr

Switching Logic

A detailed description of the operation of the switching logic can be found here: Repeater Switching Logic.

GPIO Connections

An initial list of GPIO connections is here: Repeater GPIO Connections.

Configuring IR Switching

The basic design uses one or 2 IR transmitters to control one or 2 HDMI switches. The exact IR codes for the HDMI switch used on your repeater will need to entered in the configuration file. Full details are here: Configuring IR for HDMI Switching