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Node Monitor and Control
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nmc is an alpha grade program!
It is not guaranteed to work all of the time, might crash a lot or exhibit
other strange behaviors.
Caveat Emptor!
NOTE:
July 4, 2004: Some people have complained about nmc bombing during the night. One reason for this is that during the nightly updates and house-keeping operations, IRLP does what is known as a log rotation. Whenever a log rotation occurs, nmc WILL break due to the fact that the log file it is watching disappears for all intensive purposes. Also, if nmc is started during a news play, it will get confused because it thinks a connection is in progress but some information is not present. I hope to get this fixed soon, when I get a few spare moments.
About NMC
Mike Beattie ZL4TXK wrote a Perl program, irlpmon, that provided a nice windowed display for monitoring an IRLP node. With the development of the EchoIRLP project, I thought it would be nice to be able to monitor the node for both (IRLP and EchoLink) modes of operation.
While making changes to support EchoLink, I decided to add the ability to display the status of several other flags, thereby giving a better picture of what is happening with the node. In addition, I thought it would be nice to be able to control most of the aspects of the node operation from within the monitor display, thus eliminating the necessity of having to go to another window or screen to send commands to the node using the command line interface. Because the program is now capable of controlling the operation of the node and not just monitor, the program was renamed to Node Monitor and Control or NMC for short.
NMC now has the ability not only to display what is going on within a node, but many of the internal settings can be changed with simple single letter commands which will toggle a state on or off. The new commands allow the node owner to enable/disable the IRLP node, enable/disable the EchoLink interface, enable/disable user DTMF command functions, enable/disable the Activity Time-out Timer and disconnect a currently active IRLP or EchoLink connection.
Messages Window
The Messages window displays a scrolling record of messages from the main IRLP log file. The log is scanned and the appropriate messages are picked up, reformatted and the displayed in the Messages window. This allows the node operator to see what is happening with the node and to make the appropriate decisions based on this and the other information display in the other windows.
Info Window
The Info Window displays information about the current link status. In addition to showing information about the local node, it show information about the node to which the local node is connected. The "Status:" line show what type of node is connected: IRLP Node, Reflector or EchoLink node. The "Codec:" line shows which code is being used to encode the voice data over the Internet, these usually being GSM (EchoLink, IRLP dial-up) or ADPCM (normal IRLP). If connected to an IRLP reflector, then an additional item will show to which channel the local Node is connected.
Command Window
The command window currently shows the last two command characters entered on the keyboard.
OS Stats Window
The OS Stats Window has a rotating display where, it shows the Uptime (how long the computer has been running), the number of users currently logged onto the computer, then it shows the 5 minute and 15 Minutes system load averages (just how busy the computer really is).
DTMF Window
The DTMF window display the which DTMF tones are currently being decoded by the the IRLP interface board. The length of time that the digit is displayed is stretched slightly so that it is possible to see short tone decodes.
This windows can provide some useful debugging information such as if a voice is falsing the decoder, it will be seen here. This could help to explain why someone's voice is getting chopped during a conversation. If the DTMF decoder is detecting tones in someone's voice, then the software could be muting the voice occasionally, causing drop outs that sound like packet loss.
NOTE that you should NEVER see the "D" key decode as that is the one DTMF digit that is not decoded by the IRLP hardware. Actually, the decoder chip detects the "D" digit; however, the interface is not wired for it.
States Window
This is where the greatest number of changes were made. While most of the changes reflect how my nodes operate, other users are welcome to use the code I have provided or they can make changes to suit their own nodes.
One of the things noticed right away is the addition of six more state flags: IRLP, ECHO, USER, TIMR, GATE and BUSY. I thought it would be nice to be able monitor these settable flags which control how my node operates. The USER, TIMR, GATE and BUSY will only display if they are controllable.
IRLP
This flag gives an indication as to whether or not the IRLP node enabled or disabled. When shown in the inverse colors as depicted in the image above, this indicates that the IRLP node is enabled. When the IRLP is shown in normal text, the IRLP node is disabled.
ECHO
An optional flag that only displays when EchoIRLP software is installed on a node and the ECHO_ENV is set. The flag monitors the state of $LOCAL/echo_enable. This flag gives an indication as to whether or not the EchoLink functions are enabled or disabled. When shown in the inverse colors as depicted in the image above, the EchoLink functions are enabled. When the ECHO is shown in normal colors, the EchoLink functions are disabled.
USER
An optional flag that is displayed only when the ability to enable and disable user level commands on a node. The script $CUSTOM/usrcmds controls whether or not this flag is displayed. The flag monitors the state of $LOCAL/nouser. This flag gives an indication as to whether or not the node user commands are enabled or disabled. When shown in the inverse colors as depicted in the image above, the User Commands are enabled. When the USER flag is shown in normal colors, User commands are disabled.
Yes, I can have my node enabled but not allow any users to function it. This works great for connecting to another node, then locking it into the connection.
TIMR
This flag gives an indication as to whether or not the Activity Timeout Timer is enabled or disabled. When shown in the inverse colors as depicted above, the Activity Timeout Timer is enabled. When shown in normal colors, the timer is disabled, meaning that the node will not automatically disconnect should a user not transmit.
GATE
This flag only works when the node configured to use command preaccess codes. Some large linked repeaters systems require this mode where an attention code is sent to the node before it will respond to commands. The attention (preaccess) code causes the command "gate" to open for a preset period of time.
When the flag is shown in the inverse colors, the command gate is open. When shown in normal colors, the command gate is closed and the node will not respond to any DTMF commands until the command gate is opened.
BUSY
Some node owners don't like QSOs in progress to be interrupted by incoming calls; however, after the repeater to which the node is connected goes quiet for a specified period of time, it will then accept incoming calls. The BUSY flag indicates that the local node is to be considered busy until this flag clears. The setting of this flag is controlled by the COS signal. As soon as COS is detected, this flag is set. When the COS goes inactive, a timer is started which when finished, clears the busy flag. Should a COS be detected during the timer operation, the timer is reset back to its maximum value.
When this flag is shown in inverse colors, this indicates that the busy flag is set. When shown in normal colors, the busy flag is cleared.
PTT
Whenever the node is transmitting over the air, the PTT flag will be shown in inverse colors. When the node has stopped transmitting, the flag will be shown in normal colors.
COS
Whenever the node is receiving a signal from over the air, the COS flag will be shown in inverse colors. When the nodes has stopped receiving, the flag will be shown in normal colors.
AUX1, AUX2 and AUX3
These flags indicate the active state of the three user programmable outputs of the IRLP version 3 board. These are open-collector outputs and when active provide a path to ground. When an AUX output is active, it will be shown in inverse colors. When inactive, the flags will be shown in normal colors.
BUILT-IN COMMANDS
There are six commands available to control the operation of the node and NMC. The table below provides the details for the commands:
| d | - | Disconnect the current link |
| i | - | Enable/disable (toggle) the IRLP node |
| e | - | Enable/disable (toggle) the Node EchoLink Functions |
| u | - | Enable/disable (toggle) the node User commands. |
| t | - | Enable/disable (toggle) the Activity Time-out Timer |
| q | - | Quit/exit the NMC program |
Having these commands available via NMC allows a great degree of freedom to monitor and control the operation of the node in real time, without having to use DTMF commands on the node input or using a separate window to enter commands. At this time, it is not possible to establish a connection from the NMC screen.
How do I get it?
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Special Sources
It seems that that people are having too difficult a time trying to locate the Curses file and sometimes other files. I am making them available here:
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