[FPARC] Remote controller

[Bill Sinbine]

Hi All

Below is a message that I just sent out to my FADCA list.
We need to put one of these controllers on our repeater system. We have 
just had the problem where we really couldn't use the repeater for 2 days 
because the pl got messed up. All it took was to power cycle it and it is 
working fine right now. The other time was when the 440 repeater was put on 
line and we had the problem with it locking up. Now this problem was a 
problem in the firmware in the controller but it was keyed up all night and 
all that it would have taken was to cycle the power and it would have 
reset. We have the firmware problem fixed but when is the next time that we 
will need to cycle the power ???

I bet that whoever has to go pull the plug would wish that we had one of 
these installed and then the sysop would be able to control it remotely. It 
has 6 channels and all we would need to do is add relays and install it in 
a case that I would be willing to do.
Think about it!!!


73, Bill N4XEO
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A while back we were talking about having the ability of remotely shutting 
down and restarting a switch. The reason that I'm bringing it back up again 
is to encourage anyone that is making a budget for building a switch to add 
a Intelligent DTMF Remote Control located at
http://www.nhrc.net/nhrc-remote/  .

bud has used these with no problems and likes them very well. You might 
also want to add them to your voice repeater if you have one. We just had 
our repeater controller lock up and all that was needed was to turn the 
power off and back on and all worked well. If we had one of these on our 
repeater we wouldn't have had to make a site visit to do this. I'm going to 
get this installed on our repeater so we won't have to go by the site again 
for a simple power cycle.

I would like to see ALL switch owners have one of these on their switches. 
We have a home brew one on the Stuart site and I have used it many times 
when we had a weird power glitch that locked the computer up. Now when this 
happens I just get on the port that it is hooked up to and hit the code and 
it shuts down and starts back up in several minutes.

I have had to drive to the Okeechobee site to do the same thing many times. 
If we had one of these installed I could just reboot it from the house and 
we would be back in business.
Please go to  http://www.nhrc.net/nhrc-remote/  and give it some thought 
and lets talk about it on the list. I do know that we can get a volume 
discount but I don't remember how much off for how many. I can check into 
it again if there is a interest..

73, Bill N4XEO