Configuring RepeaterPhone on the ClearNode

How to access your ClearNode via the RepeaterPhone app

ClearNode device

I’ve used DVSwitch on my Android phone to access AllStar nodes but it has never seemed very stable. From time to time, it would just quit in the middle of an AllStar net.

Then I tried RepeaterPhone (a paid app) on my iPad Mini and found it to be much easier to configure, easier to use, and very stable. Audio quality has been excellent. In fact, I liked RepeaterPhone so much I bought an old iPhone 7 Plus off eBay, primarily to use it for AllStar nets when I travel. (I got the 256 Gb model in case I want to load it with music, too.)

I can connect to my cloud node 57945 with the RepeaterPhone app. I can connect to my desktop node. But I was a bit stumped on how to configure RepeaterPhone to work with my ClearNode device. I found the advice published by RepeaterPhone was helpful but it wasn’t quite clear enough for me, so I walked through the configuration steps and wrote my own version of the steps.

I found there are four actions that lead to success:

1. Configure your ClearNode device.

2. Find the IP address of your ClearNode.

3. Configure the RepeaterPhone app.

1. Configure your ClearNode device

Configuration is done through the ClearNode app on your smartphone. DVSwitch is commonly used on Android devices and RepeaterPhone is the app I prefer on Apple devices.

In these instructions, I’ll bold the command elements, and if you will need to tap an element, it will be bolded and italicized.

1. First, open the ClearNode app. Gerry Filby of Node-Ventures.com has done an excellent job of making the Android and iPhone apps look and act the same. Tap your node number on the opening screen.

2. Find the Node setup section quite a ways down on the Node Details screen. AllStar Setup is directly below the Node setup section title. Tap on AllStar Setup.

3. In the AllStar Identity section you’ll see Node Number, Node Password, and dvswitch/zoiper Password. Enter your preferred password in the dvswitch/zoiper Password field. Make a note of it on a piece of paper because you’ll need it in a moment.

4. Now save your information by tapping Save in the top right corner of the ClearNode app. You should then see a popup. Tap the Send Setup and Restart Node command.

5. Wait a few minutes for your ClearNode to reboot.

2. Find the IP address of your ClearNode

1. From the opening screen in the ClearNode app, tap your node number. Mine is 57849. This takes you to the Node Details screen.

2. Look down that page a little bit to find your node number. Mine looks like this: Node 57849. Below that is the MAC Addr field and the LAN Address. (You might have two entries. If so, use the one associated with the “e:” field.)

3. Write down the LAN Address. (If your ClearNode is accessible from outside your LAN, you may also wish to write down the WAN Address. Scroll down a bit. It’s just two fields past the CPU Temperature field.

Note: I woke up in the middle of the night and realized why I saw two LAN addresses in my ClearNode, and it was because I had the wifi on and an Ethernet cable plugged in. The ClearNode was assigning different IP addresses to those two interfaces. “e” is for Ethernet and “w” is for wifi, so pick the one you wish to use. I recall Gerry also advising to run only one interface: “One final task – remove the ethernet cable – you don’t want to run your ClearNode on both WiFi and Ethernet at the same time – choose one or the other.” I’m off to turn the wifi off on my ClearNode now!

3. Add your AllStar account to the app

Of course, for the RepeaterPhone app to work, you must have an AllStar account and it must be added to the app. Add it now if you haven’t already:

1. Tap the Settings gear wheel at the bottom of the screen.

2. Tape New Account, then tap the AllStar Link emblem.

3. In the Callsign field, enter the username you use when logging into https://www.allstarlink.org. In the Password field, enter the password you use when logging into https://www.allstarlink.org.

4. Click Done. You may see Add Account. If so, tap it.

4. Add you ClearNode to Favorites in the app

Now that you have your AllStarLink credentials saved to the RepeaterPhone app:

1. Tap the Favorites star icon at the bottom of the screen.

2. In the upper right corner, tap the plus symbol.

3. Choose your AllStarLink username.

4. Enter your ClearNode’s node number.

5. Enter a name, probably the callsign associated with your ClearNode.

6. In the Authentication field, the default is Account. Tap Account and select Node. This is where I kept tripping up.

7. The Node configuration requires a Username and Password. For the username, enter dvswitch. For the password, find that piece of paper with the password you wrote down in step 1.3 above and enter it in the password field.

8. For Host, enter the IP Address of your LAN that you wrote down in step 2.3 above.

9. Confirm that the port number is 4569. This is how the ClearNode comes from Node-Ventures. If your port number for your ClearNode is different, enter that port number here.

10. Finally, click Add Node. This should add your ClearNode to the Favorites in the RepeaterPhone app.

Test your setup by connecting to your ClearNode from the RepeaterPhone app. I did get an error (“Failure: no authority found”) when I first tried it and went back to the basics by re-entering the password for the dvswitch context. It turned out that I had made an error in entering the password the first time, and once that was corrected, RepeaterPhone made the connection without trouble. The failure message reflected that RepeaterPhone could not authenticate to the ClearNode because I entered the password incorrectly.

Then I rebooted the ClearNode and again couldn’t connect. At some point, the RepeaterPhone app detected my WAN address and replaced it in the app where my LAN address should have been. That took about 15 minutes before I figured out what was happening. Once I entered my LAN address in the RepeaterPhone app and saved it, the app connected without hesitation to my ClearNode.

I haven’t bothered with screen shots because frankly, Gerry’s layout in the ClearNode app (both Android and iPhone) that the photos aren’t really necessary. Similarly, RepeaterPhone’s screens are pretty easy to follow.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy using RepeaterPhone with your ClearNode!