Possible to enable an INI configurable setting to send Station ID using CW instead of POCSAG at regular intervals?

[benh-au]

Hi Jonathan,

I can see from the MMDVM firmware (CWIdTX.cpp) and the settings in MMDVMHost’s INI file that you have made it possible for users to configure their system to broadcast their callsign at configurable intervals (default 10 which I believe is the international standard) for the frequency used for Digital Voice.

My understanding is that DAPNETGateway sends the callsign of the transmitting station every 10 mins in POCSAG encoding to Pager RIC 8. This is fine for those who know what encoding is on the channel and what to look for, but to other amateurs, is cryptic and not readily understandable.

To foster good-will with others in the amateur radio community (esp those who aren’t all that keen on the expansion of all these new digital modes), it would be fantastic if, for example in my country (Australia), the station ID on the POCSAG frequency could be optionally set to be sent out in CW instead.

It looks like all of the hard work, you’ve already done in writing this functionality into the firmware and voice mode frequency in MMDVMHost.

While a front-end addition to the Pi-Star dashboard could follow later, would it be possible to add a small additional feature and config section in the DAPNET GW’s INI file?

Eg:

[StationID]
TransmitStationID = 1 {possible values: 0 = off, 1 = on [default]}
TransmitMode = POCSAG {possible values: CW = morse CW ID, POCSAG = send POCSAG message as currently done [default]}
TransmitMaxIntervalMins = 10 {honoring DAPNET timeslots, send station ID no later than this frequently before then delivering queued msgs}

If by default, with the additional config defaulted to existing behaviour, most users would see no difference, but we could later place a field in the Pi-Star dashboard (or, as countries are beginning to deploy their own master DAPNET infrastructure, the behaviour could perhaps be auto-set based on country of user) - but this is beyond the scope of the software components that you personally have skillfully crafted that have made both digital voice and now paging so readily accessible to so many people with relative ease.

Thank you for the great work you have done. Please let me know if this small feature request may be accommodated into the DAPNET-Gateway daemon?

Many thanks,

Ben