I’m hoping somebody has a write up that goes into details about installing a raspberry pie into a weatherproof case sufficient, and size to accommodate SDR‘s and a battery. If there would be some way to charge the battery using solar, that would be even better but my desire is to have a self-contained system With just a bulkhead connector that would go to the feed line and preamps and antenna. Does anyone know of such a write up that discusses this? I can’t believe this is such a unique situation.
I usually try to have the Rpi in some climate controlled environment, or at least not exposed to direct sun, rain snow etc.
When running from a battery, you should use some sort of BMS that tells the pi to power down when on low charge and power it up when it’s having a chance of running.
Search for “raspberry pi ups solar charging” or similar.
Use a charge controller for the panel, battery and load to make sure you don’t kill the battery.
Buck regulator to make the 5V required for the Rpi.
Maybe there’s some good info in satnogs-kit.
thank you for the suggestions. It is a lot more work that I had hoped for. I may just run it in an enclosure on the side of my house, powered by POE or a wallwart, and then run the coax to the antenna.
My original idea was to have a single RasPi running two SDRs, one on VHF and one on UHF because I have an unused M2 egg beater set. Because of this, I was thinking to have a preamp for each, but need to find a way to power through the SDR. So I started looking at the RTL-SDR pre-amps, more for convenience, rather than performance. I had used one in my VHF only station with a WiMo antenna for years. But after some time, both the SDR-blog V3 and the pre-amp would fail.
So I was searching for some alternate config, and considered keeping stuff outside so I could minimize interference from home devices.
ok, here we’re running into the territory of two sdr to dedicated antenna, and on the other side some sort of combining to a single sdr.
either way, you should look at utilization between the bands and if you need two sdr’s or even two satnogs stations to cover this.
in my experience, VHF sees a lot less utilization so based on that alone a simpler diplexer of the two is the simplest solution here. depending on the RF environment and cable length, you might run the VHF without LNA and the UHF path has a LNA close to the feedpoint.
on the issue of interference there’s a balance, you do not want to put the Rpi close to the antennas as it’s a source of RFI/EMI. while also having it clear from other sources. this mostly points to a decent fitered LNA close to the antenna and down at the RX you make sure to not send any RFI up to the antenna and LNA.
in either case, properly assessing the RFI sources and dealing with them is crucial.
Keep in mind, elcheapo 5V wallwarts generate a lot of noise. Not good when looking for small signals from tiny satellites. The RPi also generates noise unless it is in a metal case. Make sure the USB SDR is grounded to the RPi case and main ground. I have 4 RPis running ground stations and getting the noise out was a big issue. If you can find a 5V supply with a transformer, that can help. Switched mode power supplies and tiny signals don’t work well together. Bob VK2BYF