Hello from Puerto Rico

1

Hello everybody:
My name is Damaso Cardenales and I’m from Puerto Rico. As many of you may know, the whole island got hit by a major hurricane back on Sept. 20. As a result all forms of communications went down for sometime, but the sky was clear in a couple of days so we got access to Sat TV. I got interested in the Outernet project a while ago, so as soon as I got access to the Internet and started researching for it. I got surprised when I read it was already working, so I already ordered my Dreamcatcher and LNA antenna.
I just want your support to set it up when it arrives. The purpose is to get it running and order a couple more or even use RPi’s to spread them through the Island where Internet access is not possible. Thanks.

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Damaso,
Hello from Washington State. I have experimented with software defined radios for quite a while and work as a test technician at a communications company here in the Seattle area.

I just recently read about Outernet as well. I ordered a week ago. I’m pleased to report that I just received my Dreamcatcher, the Passive Patch Antenna and an SDRx board this evening. My first goal is to evaluate the basic systems and outdoor packaging of the antennas.

I will be building two systems.

  1. Dreamcatcher and the passive patch antenna.
  2. A home-brew turnstile antenna, an NooElect LNA, a Mini-circuits bias tee, the SDRx board and a Raspberry Pi running the legacy SDcard.img image.

Your system is a little different from these two. It’s my understanding that the Dreamcatcher board already has an L-band SAW filter (1525 - 1559 MHz) and a Two-stage L-band LNA with 34dB gain built in. To prevent overloading your Dreamcatcher board, we’ll have to disable the SAW filter and the LNA.

I will be happy to help you when yours comes in the mail.

–Konrad, WA4OSH

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Hello - - a couple of us Forum members have put together a Setup Guide we are trying to get Outernet to upload onto their site. If you experience any difficulties setting up, let me know and I’ll get you a copy. Ken in Annapolis, MD

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Ken,
Thanks! I would love to read the setup guide. [email protected]

–Konrad, WA4OSH

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I’m following this guide.

http://radionerds.com/index.php/DreamCatcher#Startup_the_DreamCatcher_with_Armbian_Distro

I can’t seem to see the Dreamcatcher on WiFi. I’m trying to connect to the board via USB.

–Konrad, WA4OSH

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So I got my DC and Active Antenna on Saturday and today I finally set everything up. No problems at all, it started getting packages with minimum antenna setup. I’ll wait for the payload to download and post on the results.

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