Use hardware channel activity detection for checking interference

[weebl2000]

Using RSSI isn't very reliable (it's disabled in the code for a reason). We might try hw channel activity detection. Since we are gonna TX anyway it shouldn't be too bad to listen for a few milliseconds first. Worst case we see there is a transmission and we wait a little while. Alternative is that we just TX anyway and intefere with others causing transmission collisions.

Would be great if people could test this on their repeaters & companions and see if TX becomes more reliable.

You can build firmware for you device using https://mcimages.weebl.me?commitId=use-hardware-channel-activity-detection

First impressions after flashing this on one of my repeaters that is high up & exposed to a lot of other repeaters is that it responds a little more consistently. Sometimes it's snappier, but often times it's slightly slower but it fails way less. I.e. less failed status requests & non-answered commands.

[towerviewcams]

Ok now this is very interesting. My house has LOS to 4 high level repeaters. I'll test this when I get back from work and see what happens. reminds me of busy channel lockout in shared 2 way radio repeaters back in the day before LTR / trunking. Could be onto something here for sure.