In the Summer of 2017, I built an EchoLink “link node” using a Raspberry Pi 2 Single Board Computer, 900MHz quad-core ARM cortex A7, 1GB RAM, 10/100 Ethernet. The software is called “SvxLink” named after the call sign of the author, Tobias, SM0SVX. Information about the svxLink application can be found on Github at: http://www.svxlink.org
The link radio was an Icom ID-91AD interfaced to the computer through an Easy Digi audio/PTT isolation board and a $3 USB sound dongle. It works great! For power, I used a Pi Power Hat that WA6ED told me about that enables using a 12Volt power supply and includes a cooling fan.
Our EchoLink Linux box at the SOARA Temple Hill repeater site had never worked properly. I was never able to get the audio sounding good and the system was unreliable.
In the Summer of 2018, I built an Echolink system based on the newest Raspberry Pi 3B (4 CPU Cores at 1.2GHz and 1GB of memory, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet and 802.11n Wireless LAN), and the same Easy Digi board that I used for my previous SvxLink project.
The system was installed in July, 2018 at the Temple Hill Repeater site and it has been working great. If you have Echolink, the node number is 177360 (K6SOA-L)
My latest project was to build a repeater based on the SvxLink on Raspberry Pi. This time I used a Raspberry Pi 3B+ which was even more powerful. For the transceivers, I used two ADI AR-247 mobile radios, one for the receiver and one for the transmitter. I bought a flat-pack duplexer for 220 MHz from a seller on ebay and adjusted the band reject for RX/TX frequencies using my IFR-1900 service monitor. The repeater is currently on the air running 5 watts on 224.100 PL 123. It’s not currently coordinated with 220SMA, but I may put in an RFC for that at some point.
In late 2019, I designed a new 3D printed case for my SvxLink projects. I built a new node for the SOARA San Clemente repeater site. I may have to do something about shielding the enclosure, using metallic filament or adding external shielding. On this one I built svxlink from source so that I could run the latest version.
Leave a Reply