Wildcard

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The Quantar wireline board has what is known as "Wildcard" function. This a very basic logic programing which can do certain things at some interrupt.

Wildcard comes in two different versions, Basic and Enhanced. The 4 wire board only has basic officially, and the 8 wire board could do either with Enhanced being a Right to Use license. The difference between basic and enhanced is the logic is limited for basic, and the 8 wire board has more IO lines available than the 4 wire.

Good news is the Quantar doesn't care and you can use the 4 wire as enhanced. Simply set it to 8 wire and enhanced in the WinRSS main screen, viola, you now have all the functions on the 4 wire, other than the input/output lines which need the hardware on the 8 wire card

One (1) optically-coupled input • Seven (7) transistor-coupled inputs • One (1) relay closure output (normally open contact) • Three (3) transistor-coupled outputs

Programing Examples

This shows some of the complex examples that can be strung together using the wildcard tables. It's very unforgiving to debug, but a basic repeater controller can be implemented using it.


Receiver Indication

In a voted system using an ASTRO-TAC receiver it's sometimes wanted to know which receiver has voted the signal. The logical idea would be different tones at end of a transmission based on the receiver used. This runs into the problem in that you have to keep the receiver "receiving" in so far as the comparator is concerned or it will clip the tone played on the wireline after the radio unkeys. This can be accomplished with creative use of the 'RX QUAL FORCE' command, but it will interfer with the rest of the wireline if you're using RX QUAL as an event to key off of.

1 - RX AND TONE ON
RX ANALOG OR RX ASTRO ID AND NOT EVENT FLAG 1
Action Inaction
ABORT TIMER 1 START TIMER 1 100
ABORT TIMER 2 WL TONE ON 0
ABORT TIMER 3 SET EVENT FLAG 1
RX QUAL FORCE
RX WL INHIBIT

This will go active if receiving analog or p25 with the right NAC, but not event flag one. When the RX is active it will hold the timers in reset to prevent the rest of the tables from running. When going from active to inactive, timer one is started for 100ms, a null of tone is played on the wireline, event flag 1 is set (to keep RX QUAL FORCE from resetting the table), RX QUAL FORCE tells the compairator that the receiver is still active and RX WL INHIBIT blocks anything on the receiver from reaching the wireline so unsquleched noise isn't sent out.

I'm unsure how this functions with p25, but I think it should work assuming it's mixed mode, as the station would only make these tones in analog.


2 - Timer 1 done
TIMER 1 DONE
Action Inaction
WL TONE ON 660 NULL
START TIMER 2 100

Play the first tone of 660 hz and timer 2 sets the duration of it.

3 - Timer 2 done
TIMER 2 DONE
Action Inaction
WL TONE ON 440 NULL
START TIMER 2 100

Play the second tone of 660 hz and timer 3 sets the duration of it.

4 - Timer 3 done
TIMER 3 DONE
Action Inaction
WL TONE OFF NULL
RX QUAL FORCE
RX WL ENABLE
CLR EVENT FLAG 1

Finally we end timer 3 and turn the tone off, put receiver back to normal squelch, enable audio from receiver to wireline and clear event flag 1.