First Impressions of Outernet DIY Receiver kit.
The Outernet team is dynamic to deal with and exciting in their enthusiasm, ability and rate of achievement to goal.
On the basis of sending data from space for under $100 for a DIY hardware kit. I give them 10 out of 10.
The CHIP $9.00 computer just works great. Its really Cute and appears ideal, cheap, small, low powered and capable of running up to 4 users in the Outernet Librarian WiFi hot-spot. I would not buy anything else.
It does though need a powered hub to run the RTL E4000 dongle. (This may change in later software revisions). Not a big deal for now as It lets me put the antenna and E4000 dongle outside by running a long USB cable from the powered hub.
The CHIP Computer was very complex to Flash and as for now there is no way to use the Chrome Browser plugin provided by CHIP to flash an alternate OS onto the CHIP. Instead you have to set up a Ubuntu computer to create a environment to flash the CHIP. It took my friend Larry about and hour to do this for me on Ubuntu. (I am certain this flashing of The CHIP computer with the Outernet OS will be resolved soon)
One solution is CHIP or Outernet could just sell the CHIP already flashed.
The other option is to get a Raspberry PI and use the Raspberry Pi Outernet software but that is much more expensive option than the CHIP computer.
My CHIP came with the Video out TV Cable. Make sure you buy this extra in case you want to see your chip on a TV in VGA . (It is not needed to run the Outernet OS but it helped when we were initially testing the CHIP when it arrived.)
The Chip Outernet beta Librarian software looks and feels great. It already looks like a finished product.
Files started coming down as soon as I turned the unit on. I got about 8db signal and no errors. Outernet says it is getting a through put of about 1 Mb a hour.
The $19.00 Nooelec filter is amazing and works incredibly well. It complements the E4000 RTL dongle which from my simple playing with on Linux GQRX works really well. (I love GQRX it is such an awesome program for RTL dongle hacking)
The stand alone L-Band Antenna works really well but I think will have to be sold with a optional water-proof housing. In the Philippines I am able to lay my antenna flat and get a 8db signal from the Inmarsat 4F1 above New Guinea. According to Outernet the receiver needs at least a 4db signal for the decoder to work error free.
Well done Outernet. I absolutely recommend getting the DIY KIT.
