[arm-allstar] Feature request: Mute DTMF after * received

[Steve Matzura]

I've wanted this ever since I entered the Allstar ecosystem and was 
quite surprised to find out that it didn't already work this way. In the 
days of autopatch ubiquity and general DTMF control, as soon as the 
attention tone was received by a repeater, audio was cut to the 
transmiter until received carrier was dropped. Now, with networking, as 
soon as the attention tone (in this case, the "*") is received, the 
sending node should drop its network transmission until the RF carrier 
at the head end sending the tone sequence drops. Yes, it would mean that 
the sender can't talk after sending a DTMF sequence, as in the case of 
using local parrot or enabling or disabling something on the local node 
(like NOICE, NOICD, etc.) since the node had dropped its network 
transmission, but I don't see that as a bad consequence. Hear the star, 
end transmission. Problem goes away.


On 2/22/2022 10:05 PM, "Patrick Perdue via ARM-allstar" wrote:
> Hi:
>
> On my system, lots of folks are using DTMF to control their nodes. 
> This is fine, but sometimes, it can be a real pain during nets when 
> someone tries to disconnect between transmissions, slowly dialing the 
> sequence, getting it wrong, trying again, etc. With almost all nodes 
> on the system being simplex, and with many digital modes connected, 
> this can really slow things down. Aside from having everyone use other 
> methods, such as fast auto-dialers, Node Remote, CLI etc. would it at 
> all be possible to mimic the behavior of echolink and some other 
> systems, in which audio transmission to the network stops after the * 
> character is received by simpleusb, but still allow in-band data to be 
> processed in the normal way? My semi-education suggests that this 
> would need to be done at the module level, if it can even be done at all.
>
> I, personally, never issue DTMF commands during nets, either using 
> Node Remote on my phone or some other method to silently control my 
> node. Not everyone can do this.
>
> Thanks and 73
>
> N2DYI
>