22

I noticed my plastic case get awful hot sitting out in the sun. To get a status screen on skylark screen that shows a couple of physical and electrical parameters … temperatures, incoming voltages… I don’t know which components have these available (usually the soc, maybe the rtl-sdr, maybe gpio, I saw dallas 1-wire is being used?)

1 Like
23

Syed,

your hardware is good no question, but that itself isn’t going to give you the market share needed to do REALLY well. you need to do more… you need to provide more open software, things that ENABLE all types of people to take YOUR hardware and do something that Arduino, PI, Beagle, Orange and the dozens of others your competing with can already do, then take it farther.

you have a 20$ SDR bundled with a Ras-pi… thats all you have really… speed, more usb, more this more that doesn’t mean anything in this market, its just noise in the bottom of a spec sheet… Normal everyday users do not understand the difference. And they are the ones who you MUST HAVE to make yourself profitable.

so what do you have? Outernet satellite feed, plan and simple. If i’m looking to start playing with this stuff, do i choose the people with a simple, website, do docs, poor organization, closed source tools, or do i choose one that has a ton of open source code, tools, forums, support and pure zealot support?

You cannot win in this market, you just cannot, unless you provide the tools, and information to let those who desire and are willing to help you bring this product to the next level… i’ve read the forums, there is a legion of good and skilled users ready to contribute, but your stifling momentum for what?

whatever your endgame is, you need to consider that early adopters are key to success, don’t make them go somewhere else.

  • if you wont open source the downloader / decoder then release them as ELF for ARM on your board
  • start documenting how to do all sorts of cool stuff with this board and SDR, make a wiki (why did you turn yours off?)
  • Show people how to use YOUR product in amazing ways and that its better than Pi, beagle, arduino et-al
  • allow others to publish what they are doing.
  • be 100% supportive of their needs and nurture the culture of maker-ship
  • publish your own code snippets (that actually build) to do stuff you imagine…

with the greatest humility, (i know its tough to make decisions like this, ive been there…)

Chris

5 Likes
24

Could not agree more.

There is a HUGE amount of momentum out there to be part of in a positive enthusing way.

If Outernet needs to be profitable lets talk about that, but at the moment Outernet definitely needs to be Open Source and building on the incredible enthusiasm and goodwill they have created.

1 Like
25

Profits feed birds :wink:

3 Likes
26

Syed,

Yes profits feed birds, but you are in a saturated market, momentum will propel your hardware growth, which will propel popularity for your Outernet “services” in the NGO world.

make your hardware the absolute first choice for the radio hobbyist…

Dont assume we are simple “Users” I KNOW what your up against. Help us, help you become the standard all others measure against…

Chris

1 Like
27

Ok Profit,

A “Value Adding” product I would love to have is Outernet has a supporters Club I join, say for $5.00 a month.

As a member benefit I can either have my (text only) GMAiL, Ham Radio Messages, Or Twitter messages, etc forwarded to me in Encrypted text.

3 Likes
28

They have said in the past that the decoder comes from Inmarsat, and doesn’t have the right to release the source.

29

yes i discovered the inmarsat situation… which is why i recommended ELF for ARM… which they are now saying i should copy from Skylark… however mine just Segfaults on Armbian… without a debug version, gdb is painful.

30

not to double up threads, but today it seems that its not segfaulting I dunno what condition was met to prevent it, but there it is… I’m pushing forward… thanks all.

31

what ever it is. it needs to have better wifi range.

Since C.H.I.P. boards are Hard to Find. is there anything else that can replace it?

Just thoughts

32

The Orange Pi Lite with a quad core, WiFi and 512mb of Ram for about US$12.00 . would do the job. It has a replaceable 50 mm WiFi antenna with some kind of micro connector. It runs Armbian Linux like a dream.

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Orange-Pi-Lite-Support-ubuntu-linux-and-android-mini-PC-Beyond-and-Compatible-with-Raspberry/1553371_32662738571.html

1 Like
33

I think the current receiving product is pretty good, I am an experimenter by nature, so I don’t mind building a receiver from parts. I think the key is content. I’ve only been doing this for a week and there seems to be hole in the content. I like the fact that you guys are adding some Wikipedia content that is relevant to the days events, but I was hoping for some documentation on various topics of value. Something that would inspire me to look deeper at a topic or inspire me to build it. I don’t care for Lesbian death bed, that goes straight in the trash. The concept as I understand it was for people in remote areas, so I would assume third world countries. In which case I would have expected educational documents. How to read, math, how to get water from air, creating usable soil, books etc. I was expecting something different. Twitter messages, I can do without. APRS, I am a ham and I can see the value if someone needed to get in touch with me, maybe.

I like you news feed, I haven’t picked up on any agendas yet, but I like the content so far.

There is value in the weather maps.

Games are a plus.

I am not picky on the hardware side of things. If it works and I can run it on emergency power, solar, wind, I am happy.

You guys are surely going in the right direction and I can see a paid per month for better content on top of the free stuff, like a book club of the month or audio book.

I will go back under my rock and sit on the sidelines now.

Thanks again for thinking this project up!!!

4 Likes
34

what about making a kit to make the rpi work again with the revever and aother parts

1 Like
35

The Pi products were never successful for us. I would have assumed otherwise.

Based on years of feedback and sales data, what we need is a system that:
A: Just Works
B: Delivers audio and video, as well as files

We are trying our damdest…

2 Likes
36

Considering audio… what is involved with a bluetooth xmit … are there usb dongles that are compatible with the dreamcatcher board/ skylark software systems? Some of the wiki articles and some of the news items seem to have place holders for multimedia embeds… but downlink overhead would seem impractical. or should this come from the browser device that is connected to the dreamcatcher?

37

or even providing support for dreamcather or even the chip to do fm radio would be cool

38

As you talk of audio & video
Actually, in Europe if the Dreamcatcher could easily do DAB It would be good too…
FM radio is on the way out in Europe ( they want the spectrum back!) and DAB radios are still stupidly expensive.
SDR-J Software defined radio Is an Open Source DAB project that you may be able to incorporate in your software

1 Like
39

2 way data would be neat but there are probably still regulations about transmission to a satellite

40

FM already proven works, DAB is a pretty cool idea :slight_smile: Here is a manual and in section 4 one will find the Linux install guide, should be work on Dreamcatcher (not sure of the decoder softwares CPU need however…)
https://www.sdr-j.tk/sdr-j-dab-manual-0.99.pdf

41

It should go without saying - - a product like the shortwave radios of the 1950’s and 1960’s that spread news and information to a recovering world from 2 World Wars. It was affordable, simple to operate, well packaged, and inexpensive. It filled the gap for millions of people who had no other means of information.

I download one terabit of data each month from my internet provider for all that I do at home, but the estimates are 4 billion people in the world today still have no internet access - - no news - no information - nothing.

I don’t think this should shock anybody - - it was the original objective of Outernet, but somehow we Forum members seem to have forgotten it. We need to get back to it again. I know Syed @Syed has not. :slight_smile:

Ken

3 Likes