Dreamcatcher experimentation

Anyone tried anything ‘unorthodox’ with this system yet? I was going to test hooking up BOTH the antenna to see if it would work. (Active on bottom port, passive on top port) I thought it might work because when you switch between the antenna ports via the script, you actually turn one sma port off and the other on, right? So what if I just turned the other on without turning the first one off? :slight_smile: Might seem redundant, but I’m mostly curious what that would do for the Rssi or SNR. Might have other non-Outernet applications as well if it worked.

I think if you were to turn both antennas on you have a good chance of changing your name from “Unixpunk” to “BrokenDreamcatcherPunk”.

2 Likes

Its a switch - it can either pass thru one or the other input. There are two control signals to it - that are hooked up to rfswitch1 and rfswitch2. The only valid configurations are when rfswitch1 is off and rfswitch2 is on, or the other way round.

configs in which rfswitch1 and rfswitch2 are both either on or off are “invalid” configs - they don’t hurt anything, but none of the rf ports will reach the rtlsdr. So you won’t see any signal at all in such configs.

There is no way to have both ports reach the rtlsdr at the same time - at least not in the software. But as I said, the invalid config, by itself, isn’t going to cause any permanent damage to the Dreamcatcher.

I want to try #diversity# reception… based on above note … one dreamcatcher can only listen to one of the ports… But for $99 I could place a second kit. My reason is the outdoor antenna can easily get buried in snow… so a second (probably also at a less then ideal location- like inside) would be the redundant back-up. Is there any thoughts on how someone with limited knowledge could – combine that decoded downloaded files – into one interface?

Thanks for the confirmation on the software switching!

There is at least one other user on here that is using rsync to sync files between different Outernet devices. They would need to be on the same LAN and it should work. Someone else on here could help with which files you’d need to sync, I haven’t done it so I’m not sure. @nbkhwjm might be willing to share what he’s using to accomplish this.

syncing between devices is a hack at best now. But what i did was to use FTP to sync the two systems with each other from a third system. Using the armbian image though you could easily sync multiple systems using rsync… the best reason for this would be to bring up to speed systems that were offline. I also stuff additional data in the system like manuals for stuff people may want… gardening, engine repair, etc… push onto one system and they are replicated…

Im just playing now, seeing whats most useful…

2 Likes