POCSAG encoder and 200W transmitter

Lately I've been writing some more code for the amateur paging network project. On Sunday morning I wrote a new POCSAG encoder module in Perl, and on Sunday evening and Monday evening I wrote a simple "modem" for an Arduino card to drive the encoded messages at 512 (or 1200, or 2400) bit/s to an FSK transmitter.

I intend to release most of the bits and pieces as open source, starting with the POCSAG encoder and modem bits. Here's a little video showing the working setup:

As you can see, I haven't grown up enough to not put too many blinking LEDs in my designs. Unfortunately my electronics design skills are mostly limited to calculating the series resistor needed for the LED, so I have to focus my efforts in driving the LEDs from the software in a fancy way. The blue LED does serve a purpose - it shows that the FSK keying timer interrupt routine is working, and indicates it's state. Here's a photo of the Arduino card:


The Perl POCSAG encoder module (POCSAG::Encode) takes one or more messages and encodes them in a binary string. Unlike the other encoders we've found, this one can actually create a long burst with a number of messages, saving a lot of channel time. Only a single preamble is needed, and a lot of idle codewords can be saved between the messages, too.

The burst string is transmitted over USB serial to the Arduino board (the board has an USB-serial chip between the USB port and the Atmel chip) using a protocol which, in theory, resembles the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) protocol used with AX.25 packet radio. There are some differences so I've named it PISS, for POCSAG.

The "modem" software on the Arduino waits until the channel is clear, keys the transmitter, and simply sends the bits out through the transmitter's TX data (FSK in) pin. It currently has the usual txdelay and txtail settings hard-coded in the source code. It sends a report back to the host software when the burst string has been received by the modem, and when it has been transmitted, so that the host knows to send the next burst. The Arduino board costs some 20-30€ - if that's too much per transmitter, it's straightforward to just put the Atmel chip on a board alone with an RS-232 or USB transceiver. There are some plans to do just that and design a custom board for the purpose.

The traditional method would have been to drive the FSK out on one of the RS-232 or parallel port handshaking pins. During these days of multitasking and multi-user operating systems it requires a kernel driver, and I didn't quite feel like doing that right now.

The transmitter is a surplus 200W paging transmitter with real FSK keying, configured to run on 144.975 MHz. It happens to have TTL I/O pins, so it can be directly attached to the Arduino.

Erik, OH2LAK, the local repeater builder and coordinator, is also writing about the paging project in his blog. Check out the D-star repeater from a surplus VHF base station radio!

UPDATE 2010-01-31: I finally finished packaging and releasing the software last weekend, and documented it a bit.