Hey @wnagele,
Please see post Current hardware and software state - #2 by pierros that is addressing most of your points. tl;dr We are getting there
Documentation, documentation and documentation. Basically we need as many people as possible to try following the instructions here and amend them.
Also creating documentation on how to add existing (non SatNOGS) hardware on our network is a huge deal. Any help on that would be deeply appreciated.
We are well aware of that and we are making strong steps, trying to fix that. Stick around and contribute so we can all get there sooner!