Station and Radio Site Control Systems
Station Controller Description
Station Controllers provide remote monitoring and control of your radio station, remote radio site or any other critical assets.
The SRS Station Controller is currently in beta testing at several sites. The pictures below show some of the beta site deployments and hardware boards that have been designed so far.
APPLICATION - RADIO SITE MONITORING AND CONTROL
Managing critical assets at remote sites is difficult, time consuming and expensive. Knowing the current health, or even more important, the status of equipment that is degraded or has failed is critical. You can easily spend a whole day just getting to a remote site. Wouldn't it be great if you knew before you left, what the failure was? Did the power supply fail? Did the PA on the transmitter fail? Did the antenna system fail? When a remote radio installation is degraded or off the air, it's hard to know what the problem is. Even better, it would be great to get an early warning when things start to fail.
SRS Station Controllers can tell you the current state of your critical assets including repeater systems, wireless internet systems, solar power and battery systems, HVAC units, door security, RF power and other critical measurements. You can also remotely actuate relays to change the site's configuration or turn equipment on and off.
APPLICATON - STATION MONITORING AND CONTROL
In today's modern radio room, you typically have several radios, antennas, power systems, amplifier and other radio accessories. A station controller lets you centralize the control and monitoring of this equipment. The control point could be a physical button panel at the operating position, a soft panel on a PC screen, a scheduled event or remotely controlled over the internet. At the flick of a button, your entire station come to life, you can switch radios and antennas or turn specific equipment on and off. You can also monitor critical station status including AC power on/off, DV voltages, RF power, etc.
HARDWARE ARCHITECTURE
The SRS Station Controller has been designed in two form factors. One form is based on the same modular 3U card rack that we use in our repeater controllers. This makes it easy to integrate a station controller in a commercial site, at the dispatch center or at home. The modular architecture allows you to build up your system over time by adding the modules you need. You can mix and match any combination of available modules or even design your own.
The second form factor is a single integrated circuit board that hosts the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and peripheral connections. This complete station controller on a board nicely fits in a shallow 1U rack mount chassis.
SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
The master control processor is a Raspberry Pi running Rasberry PI OS. We publish the communications protocol to allow you to develop your own applications in any programming language you like or use one of our sample applications written in Node Red or Python.
AVAILABILITY
The SRS Station Controller is currently in beta at several sites. We will update you on this web site as we make progress and the controllers become available.
The SRS Station Controller is currently in beta testing at several sites. The pictures below show some of the beta site deployments and hardware boards that have been designed so far.
APPLICATION - RADIO SITE MONITORING AND CONTROL
Managing critical assets at remote sites is difficult, time consuming and expensive. Knowing the current health, or even more important, the status of equipment that is degraded or has failed is critical. You can easily spend a whole day just getting to a remote site. Wouldn't it be great if you knew before you left, what the failure was? Did the power supply fail? Did the PA on the transmitter fail? Did the antenna system fail? When a remote radio installation is degraded or off the air, it's hard to know what the problem is. Even better, it would be great to get an early warning when things start to fail.
SRS Station Controllers can tell you the current state of your critical assets including repeater systems, wireless internet systems, solar power and battery systems, HVAC units, door security, RF power and other critical measurements. You can also remotely actuate relays to change the site's configuration or turn equipment on and off.
APPLICATON - STATION MONITORING AND CONTROL
In today's modern radio room, you typically have several radios, antennas, power systems, amplifier and other radio accessories. A station controller lets you centralize the control and monitoring of this equipment. The control point could be a physical button panel at the operating position, a soft panel on a PC screen, a scheduled event or remotely controlled over the internet. At the flick of a button, your entire station come to life, you can switch radios and antennas or turn specific equipment on and off. You can also monitor critical station status including AC power on/off, DV voltages, RF power, etc.
HARDWARE ARCHITECTURE
The SRS Station Controller has been designed in two form factors. One form is based on the same modular 3U card rack that we use in our repeater controllers. This makes it easy to integrate a station controller in a commercial site, at the dispatch center or at home. The modular architecture allows you to build up your system over time by adding the modules you need. You can mix and match any combination of available modules or even design your own.
The second form factor is a single integrated circuit board that hosts the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and peripheral connections. This complete station controller on a board nicely fits in a shallow 1U rack mount chassis.
SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE
The master control processor is a Raspberry Pi running Rasberry PI OS. We publish the communications protocol to allow you to develop your own applications in any programming language you like or use one of our sample applications written in Node Red or Python.
AVAILABILITY
The SRS Station Controller is currently in beta at several sites. We will update you on this web site as we make progress and the controllers become available.
BETA HARDWARE PICTURES
Station Controller with several board types from left to right.
#1 - Power supply board with power switch and power LED.
#2 - Main CPU bord with Raspberryi PI 4
#3 - DC relay board with 6 small signal SPDT contacts brought out to pluggable terminal blocks on the front edge
#4 - DC volt meter board with 4 differential 0-30 volt inputs and 4 ground referenced 0-30 volt inputs with pluggable terminal blocks
#5, #6 and #7 - MMDVM digital voice mode hotspot host adapters
#8 - Simple 4 button "front panel" to signal power on/off to the MMDVM boards in this application
#1 - Power supply board with power switch and power LED.
#2 - Main CPU bord with Raspberryi PI 4
#3 - DC relay board with 6 small signal SPDT contacts brought out to pluggable terminal blocks on the front edge
#4 - DC volt meter board with 4 differential 0-30 volt inputs and 4 ground referenced 0-30 volt inputs with pluggable terminal blocks
#5, #6 and #7 - MMDVM digital voice mode hotspot host adapters
#8 - Simple 4 button "front panel" to signal power on/off to the MMDVM boards in this application
MMDVM Host Adapter Board
This board combines a Raspberry PI and local power supply with an MMDVM digital voice modem/radio board. In addition there is a local processor on board that is used to remotely control power to the Raspberry PI and MMDVM boards.
This board combines a Raspberry PI and local power supply with an MMDVM digital voice modem/radio board. In addition there is a local processor on board that is used to remotely control power to the Raspberry PI and MMDVM boards.
SINGLE BOARD STATION CONTROLLER - VERSION 1 PROTOTYPE
This is the prototype version of the single board station controller. Features include:
- Raspberry Pi web host running Node Red
- 6 small signal relays
- 2 open collector outputs for larger relays
- 4 opto isolated digital inputs
- 4 DC volt meter inputs
- 3 digital temperature probe inputs
SINGLE BOARD STATION CONTROLLER - VERSION 2 FINAL PRODUCTION VERSION
In the final production version the board was made larger, major components were moved around and the board was completely re-routed.
This is the final production version of the single board station controller. Features include:
This is the final production version of the single board station controller. Features include:
- Raspberry Pi web host running Node Red
- 6 small signal relays
- 2 open collector outputs for larger relays
- 4 opto isolated digital inputs
- 4 DC volt meter inputs
- 3 digital temperature probe inputs
- 6 Pin DIN jack for WaveNode RF directional coupler to measure forward and reflected RF power with PTT input
- 2 differential DC volt meters with optional 16 bit ADC daughter board
- 2 audio isolation transformers
- Relays have optional jumpers to apply ground or +V to a pin of the relay with out external wiring
- I2C expansion headers. One for the Raspberry Pi and one for the Arduino. Mainly used for I2C status LCD display
- RS-485 communications available on terminal block and through dedicated RJ45 with power
WEB CONTROL PANEL
The station controller can be controlled by a web based user interface developed in Node Red providing control of all relays and monitoring voltages, temperatures and digital inputs.
NODE RED FLOW "CODE"
The Node Red source code is available for download on the Support page.
