[arm-allstar] Introduction and share of project: LCD screen and controls for a Rasp Pi Allstar Node

[John Gedde]

Hello good people, I'm John AD2DK and this is my first post to the group
I'm an electronics/software/mechanical engineer by trade and have been an
avid radio nut since I was 6 or 7 years old.  A few months back, Pres W2PW,
gave a presentation at our ham club about Allstar and I found it interesting
enough to play around with.  I became familiar with it quickly with a lot of
time, experimentation and help from Pres.  Anyway, enough about me and onto
a project I'd like to share with the group (I have another one coming that I
have had tremendous interest in, but I haven't finished documenting it.
Consider that a teaser.)

I thought it'd be cool to add a simple display to the Pi to give info about
the Allstar node.  Soon I discovered a $25 adaFruit kit for a 2x16 LCD
display for the Raspberry PI (adaFruit 1110.)  I was pleased to find that it
also had controls buttons on it!  Up, down, left, right and select.  This
opened up a bunch of new possibilities beyond just showing info.  I then dug
in and wrote a software package that works with HamVOIP (and likely ASL, but
I haven't tested it) to give a bunch of functions to the Pi node without
having to use SSH or Supermon.  Think portable, no laptop, or just too lazy
to get that all going at a new site to make adjustments (I'm in that latter
category...)  On to what I did...

Cheers!
John AD2DK

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Synopsis: Use a inexpensive two-line LCD display kit ($25) from adaFruit to
give your Raspberry PI node an interactive display and control interface!

Code, executable and documentation are here:

 
<https://github.com/jgedde/Allstar-Node-LCD?fbclid=IwAR26Iqcz3LTacDZi7pJwOIl
abjFgs0uXFBv2DIdGj5QmoZrZnb9DlT1BNwc>
https://github.com/jgedde/Allstar-Node-LCD

Main Menu functions:

1) Node Connect

2) Node Disconnect

3) Show Connections

4) Set Active Node

5) Show Active Node

6) View Node Info.

7) Shutdown Node

8) Reboot Node

9) View Other Info

10) Wifi Connect

11) Backlight Test

12) Run Script

13) Quit LCD

Other features:
Uses RBG backlit display to color code node status - Standby, network
connected, COS, PTT, PTT+COS, etc. Show wifi network, connect to a new wifi
network, show IP address, show who's connected to your node, define favorite
node numbers to quickly connect to, and more...