Pickle button for jammer hunting

1

What would it take in terms of a fee/donation to get a “pickle button” function on the GPIO pins?

I really believe this is essential to hunting something like a repeater jammer.
I don’t trust my ability to hit the screen buttons accurately while moving, nor should I need that distraction while driving.

Most of the traffic on the repeater input frequency will be legit users. Without the button, I will end up clearing the data over and over and over waiting for the jammer to pop up. I also can’t predict for the Kraken how many signals to expect, nor is there any way for the Kraken to ident the jammer.

The simplest solution is the human pushes the button when the jammer is transmitting, and hopefully the repeater users are smart enough not to try to transmit over the jammer.

The existing button on the screen is small and located close to other screen buttons, making a mistaken press very likely especially while driving on less than perfect roads.

I suppose another way would be to make a “jammer mode” option with a big button center screen, but that seems more work and less ideal than a simple pickle switch.

Button open: Do not log data
Button closed: Log data

Showing the antenna pattern during the button open state would be useful in some cases, so i would prefer that to be the case, just don’t use any data collected while the switch is open to determine the transmitter position.

This would require one GPIO (configured for input) and one ground. A pullup resistor added to the GPIO of about 1k would assure a solid high when the button is open. The “pickle switch” is up to the user, but could be a pendant button like:
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/switchcraft-inc/921KX/1832326
or a footswitch mounted properly, but all that’s up to the user.

High = Button open = Don’t log data.

I suppose a “use pickle switch” option would need to be in the configuration options.

3 Likes
2

You mean a GPIO on the Pi? Then this feature would not be functional on x86 or VMs, right?

3

I guess thats true.
I only use the kraken with the pi

4

I understand what you mean. And the idea is good. Should be very useful. There is alot of jammers here. And a button would be good.

5

Having been in the mobile DF world hunting for bad actors into repeaters, etc for a long time and with many different systems over the years, I too think it would be greatly helpful to have the ability for a physical button to assist with clearing not-required signals from the DF solution.

Since there are some situations of continuous signals of interest with interspersed ones to be dismissed and then alternatively situations where there are a majority of signals to be dismissed for DF purposes with occasional signals of interest, it would seem that ideally some flexibility in how this function could be configured would be of great value.

I like the concept that the system would be listening and incorporating all received signals and that the operator then have the ability to cause one or more to be removed from the DF solution. I’m not sure that a fixed “erase last 5 seconds” is the best approach as a signal of interest could be within that time block along with a signal to be dismissed.

How about the notion of each transmission received be seen as a separate event and that then the user could use the button to back through the list and choose to erase ones from the solution? Maybe this would be a 2 button solution, back and erase.

Or another option, that each received transmission be held in “pending” and shown highlighted or different color or some such, for some period of time and at the end of said time the system default to include or exclude it from the DF solution as configured. Then with this, a physical button be able to during this pending interval either dismiss or accept the signal into the DF solution as configured?

I too would be willing to contribute to fund this effort if required. Sadly I too am not a software guy so I can’t assist in that manner.

6

My approach to this issue, will be have the repeater controller do the hard work with a white list of authorize user, has soon unauthorized transmitter is detected the controller will activate a unique PL or DPL link ONLY to a portable or mobile unit and physical wire will enable the Kraken to start DFing on the uplink frequency.

My other approach if you have multiple channel in you trunking system again with authorize list of user will be to direct unauthorized to a reserve channel only for them and just DF on this one.

7

I see how that works, but there are still a lot of simple repeaters out there, and many cases where the rogue transmitter won’t change frequency.