Simple Screen & Controls for AllstarLink3

Add a low cost $5 display unit to any Raspberry Pi running ASL3 and gain real-time status and a simple node control menu.

The screen and software installed in the RLN-Z2 Radio-Less Node, but it will work on any ASL3 node running on a Raspberry Pi

What you’ll need:

You’ll need the LCD/Button combo from Adafruit, Amazon or AliExpress, this is a 240×240 pixel 1.3″ display with two action buttons.

AliExpress Link: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001746881831.html

Adafruit Link: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4484

If these links aren’t working anymore then search for “Raspberry monitor Mini PI TFT DA 1.3 240×240“. Basically any screen that looks like this one in these pictures will probably work.

The display plugs onto the raspberry Pi Header on any Pi version. When you have a display, plug into the left-hand end of the header as shown above. You are now ready to install the software.

Installing the software:

Go to the terminal prompt on your AllStarLink node in the Web Admin Portal.

Enter the following three commands:

wget https://g1lro.uk/installdisplay.sh chmod 777 installdisplay.sh ./installdisplay.sh

It can take a few minutes to complete depending on the amount of updates your Pi needs, but once it’s done you’ll have your screen showing node information like on the image at the top of the page.

If you are connected to a node it will show on the display, and if you make node connections, with say Allmon, then the display will update in a few seconds.

The Uptime measurement is DD:HH:MM

Favourites File

The display software is most useful if you have a favorites file. This is a simple text file with up to 6 of your most commonly connected nodes that will be accessible from the menu on the screen.

Edit the file with the following command at the prompt:

nano favourites.txt

In the file you see the default entry (hubnet)

simply add new entries by putting a friendly name of up to around 8 characters (so it fits on the screen) followed by a comma, then the node number:

Do CTRL-X then Y to save the file.

Reboot the ASL node to read the new favourites file, (this happens on startup), type this command to reboot:

sudo reboot

The menu software will automatically load each time the Pi boots up.

Navigating with the buttons.

Due to a slow display driver the software can lag a bit, so be patient and use long presses, maybe up to 1 second

There are two buttons:

The top (A) button moves around the screen to select things.
The bottom button (B) acts on the selection.

Enter the favourites menu by pressing button B when the word Favourites is selected.

Press button A a few times to move to the chosen station and press the B button. This will connect to the station and take you to the main screen

With an active station on the main screen and connected, navigate to the select it with button A, then press button B to disconnect.

Updates and improvements

I have released this software as open-source on GitHub. Feel free to modify and enhance it, please do contribute back to the main code any interesting updates and bugfixes, so everyone can enjoy the enhancements. Also please report issues there too:

https://github.com/G1LRO/ASL-Display

When there’s a good release software update, I’ll update the download on this web site so everyone can have the new version by default.