Exactly what is Othernet?
Othernet is beamed down from a satellite at about 2kb/s, news, weather, aprs messages, wikipedia articles…
What can I do with it? Is this some kind of pie-in-the-literal-sky file sharing utility and hardware?
Hardware is the receiver, it collects and stores these files, and makes them accessible via wifi.
Can someone get the news and weather with this product?
Yes some news articles are transmitted and can be received, also Grib2 files that contain weather information.
Query the internet?
Nope it’s one way, from the sky to your receiver, if you want to send information you’ve got to send it some other way (APRS), that said I gather the current hardware has transmit capabilities, not currently in the firmware, That said, you probably won’t hit a satellite, and even if you could you’d need to have one ready to receive what your sending, probably some additional hardware, amps, antenna, authorization to transmit on the band, etc…
Check WinLink messages? Do I need a computer?
Idk about winlink, never dug into that. Computer would help with updating firmware on current hardware, but any wifi device that can show a web page could connect and view the files.
Is there a monthly fee associate with the Dreamcatcher?
If there is no one told me, I’m not paying anything monthly, and mine continues to work.
What is an LNB?
LNB: Low-noise block downconverter - Wikipedia
Basically it’s an antenna, down converter, band pass filter, amplifier and everything else you need to turn the sat signals into something the software defined radio can understand.
And most importantly, is it possible to send aprs messages using the network?
Send? No. Receive? Yes. One of the files that gets sent down is a list of all the APRS traffic that got picked up by APRS-is and met the requirements (don’t remember what they are) to get sent back down through Othernet.