Introducing LEDACS-ESK - Linux EDACS ESK Trunk Tracking CLI Software

[lwvmobile]

Have a Linux Desktop or a Raspberry Pi 3B+?
Want to track EDACS 9600/EDACS ESK with EA?
Want to help a piddly project with helpful feedback and ideas?

Well, I want to formally introduce a software project that I've been working on for the past several months.

It is a Linux based command line interface software that can lock onto EDACS 9600 control signals using one RTL dongle, and tune to the required LCN channel with a second dongle. The current feature set includes displaying an IDLE status with Site ID, Showing Voice channels when they are active with current LCN number, the group ID and Sender ID within the active voice channel assignment, tuning said voice channels with the second dongle, an Allow/Deny list to actively allow or block group or sender ID numbers, and display status and dump full frame messages with debug verbosity turned on.

So far, I have gotten this software to work quite well with Florida's SLERS system. I have not been able to test this with other variants of EDACS, and if anybody would want to test that and give feedback, I would be thrilled.

To see more on my project and try it out, you can visit my github page:

GitHub - lwvmobile/ledacs-esk: Linux EDACS ESK Trunk Tracking using rtl_fm and rtl_udp.

Linux EDACS ESK Trunk Tracking using rtl_fm and rtl_udp. - lwvmobile/ledacs-esk

github.com

Just read the readme.txt to get it compiled and running, so far its tested and working well on Ubuntu 18.04 based distros and Rasberry Pi 3B+ with Raspian Buster. I believe it should work just fine as well on many other Linux systems, just some of the dependencies may be slightly different.

Here is a sample of the output you get for those who want to see a little demo. In the demo, all the voice was encrypted, but there are some groups that aren't, but I couldn't capture them in my little test run for the video demo.

And if you need a look at the sample output from the software, here is a copy paste of it in case the video was a bit difficult to read.

Sockets successfully initialized
Found 2 device(s):
  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001
  1:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000002

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Tuner gain set to 49.60 dB.
Tuned to 851627000 Hz.
Oversampling input by: 35x.
Oversampling output by: 1x.
Buffer size: 8.13ms
Exact sample rate is: 1008000.009613 Hz
Sampling at 1008000 S/s.
Output at 28800 Hz.
LCN[1]=851375000Hz
LCN[2]=851800000Hz
LCN[3]=855987500Hz
LCN[4]=858487500Hz
CC=LCN[1]
LEDACS-ESK v0.2 Build 2020.08.12
Time: 15:44:10  AFC=1786     IDLE     MT-1=[0xF]     Site ID=[243]
Time: 15:44:20  AFC=1860     IDLE     MT-1=[0xF]     Site ID=[243]
Time: 15:44:30  AFC=1933     IDLE     MT-1=[0xF]     Site ID=[243]
Time: 15:46:47  AFC=1994    VOICE    MT-1=[0xF]     LCN=4
Sender=[ 199401i]
Group=[  1155g]
Time: 15:46:51  AFC=2043    VOICE    MT-1=[0xF]     LCN=2
Sender=[ 197868i]
Group=[  1155g]
Time: 15:47:05  AFC=2009    VOICE    MT-1=[0xF]     LCN=4   
Sender=[ 197868i]
Group=[  1155g]

If you guys want to, please feel free to try it out, let me know if you were able to get it compiled, if it works, any issues, anything, and I'll be more than happy to help you out in any way I can. I really noticed a hole for EDACS trunk tracking in other Linux software projects, and wanted to fill that hole, so I'll do anything I can to shape this up into being something to fill in that niche gap. Thanks guys.

 

[lwvmobile]

Feature Update V0.3b (and Shameless Plug)
After a few months of tinkering on and off, I feel like I've gotten this project a considerable amount further than it was before. A lot of the underlying things are mostly the same, tweaked, or corrected. The major release to V0.3b is the inclusion of NCurses and the general conciseness it provides.

Now, with Ncurses, instead of getting a rolling IDLE and ACTIVE printout, you will get a concise output that shows all the pertinent values of interest without endless line printing (although that mode is still available to those who wish to log output) In the IDLE window, we can see the ESK EA MT-1 and MT-2 Binary data, Message 1 and Message 2 hexidicimal values, Site Peers, Kicks, and Patch Source and Targets.

In the NCurses window you can see the ESK EA MT-1 and MT-2 Binary data, the Message Frames in hexidimal, the current LCN tuned and corresponding frequency, and the Sender and Group Values, as well as which type of channel assignment is currently active.

Did I mention you get an ASCII Enterprise?

You may watch a video demonstration if you wish to see it in action below. Just don't mind the creaking/popping sound of my headset, or the nervous rambling.