Welcome

This site is the main information hub for the newly formed Solihull Interlinking Group that has a specific interest in Internet Linking and digital communications. The new group is a collaboration between Mark G4LCH & Dave G4DPZ plus a carefully selected close down & administration team for each system.

There are many new industry standard tools in production that will be released for public use, 100% free from malware and develper controlled phone home functions that in our opinion have no place in modern software development.

If software has the smallest backdoor it can be exploited.

Software Development Update

The group has been working hard on the tools needed to enable us to deliver our latest major project. The core of this being CTCSS generation, detection, 1750 Hz Tone-Burst detection and DTMF support using just a sound card. We have perfected the software components to deliver this vital support, this work has taken place on Widows, OSX and also Linux with total success. The first part of the project is the release of a set of tools for users, gateways and repeaters alike. While some developers and content with adding as many buttons to a form as possible linking though to a third part API we prefer to do our audio processing using our own software. It is vital for us to fully support OSX which is arguably the most stable operating system to date (Linux is just as stable by the way).  The Echotone project after its re-write takes advantage of our new CW engine.  Which does not just generate simple morse characters, it too has its own DSP filtering to remove any chirp and clicks from the tones. The whole audio thing consumes a lot of development time as its a black art  but one we have now mastered. 

GB3UI will be the main test bed for our new tools as will MB7IBG, be sure to check back for he first in our series.

MB7IBG has changed its node number for the Birmingham Internet Gateway to 7889, the england conference server has been assigned a new node number, MB7IBG operates in conference mode and is able to support 50 concurrent users which will provide sufficient connectivity in normal circumstances. The node number is like a telephone number assiged to the gateway, repeater or conference and users to enable quick connections, and dtmf dialing. Moving forward dialing 7889 will connect you to the MB7IBG gateway.

Echolink Operations

It is intended to make better use of the available conference servers in order to route traffic more effectivly, we have reduced the number of simultaneous connections to and from MB7IBG. We are in the process of writing up some important findings after taking an intensive look at both the Echolink protocol and the bridge program / Echolink itself. MB7IBG will continue to be DTMF controllable. We are lookng at the log files to see what connections are used, when and the frequency of use. This data wil be feed into a new piece of control software that will be used to time control connections.

 Regards G4LCH