Othernet in 2024?

saveitforparts · 2024-10-23T23:36:50.437Z

I’ve been curious about this Othernet thing for a while, but could never tell how active it was. There was a flurry of publicity 10 years ago, then after it switched to Ku-band I heard it had gone offline completely. The website always seemed a few years out of date, so I hesitated to buy any hardware. I saw Dreamcatchers on eBay for $50 but was hesitant to pay that much if there was nothing to receive. I emailed Othernet last year to inquire if they were still live, but never got a response.

Recently I heard that it’s still somewhat active, but receiver sales are over and the broadcast is shutting down in a couple months? It sounds like not enough people bought the hardware for it to stay in operation, and the hardware was too expensive to get much of a user base? Either way, I seem to have caught it right as it really is going out of business.

I’m wondering if anyone ever got a DIY setup working with the Ku-band version of Outernet? All the articles and info I can find about it are from ~2015 when it was still L-band. I have various dish antennas, SDRs, and a couple DVB-S2 modems, and I’m kind of curious what it takes to receive and decode anything while it’s still around.

saveitforparts · 2024-10-24T19:30:40.977Z

Coincidentally, someone just gave me a box of obsolete satellite hardware that included a Dreamcatcher! I couldn’t get it to work with the bare Bullseye LNB, but strapped to a 7ft parabolic dish it works great! Currently downloading last month’s news!

I had to hunt around for the latest frequency info, and it took me a few hours to get it going, but it does in fact still work! Now I wish I’d tried it a few years ago, but I could never quite tell if it was a scam or legit.

saveitforparts · 2024-10-25T20:16:46.923Z

I left my Dreamcatcher running all day, and it seems to just have a few news articles from September 12th and a couple Wikipedia updates. No weather, messages, or anything newer than 9/12/24. I tried sending a message following the pinned instructions, but never saw it come through.

I realize I’m here at the end-of-life after the project has been abandoned, but at least it was fun to see something from it! I’ll do a video about it on my Youtube channel when I get a chance.

I’ll hold on to the Dreamcatchers (and Lighthouse that was in the same box), in case there’s another use for them. The wide-band SDR with transmit ability seems promising, if it could be interfaced with SDR++ or RTL_TCP or something. I did get Armbian onto one but couldn’t get any packages to update or install, I assume the release is too old and has also been abandoned.

duane909 · 2024-10-26T18:59:45.138Z

As a HAM you can use the hardware as a local data point.

K3FTW · 2024-10-27T15:01:26.476Z

Hey! I’m a subscriber to your YT. Nice to see you here. I bought the hardware and it was fun but I was here too late as well. It has promise but I know it’s expensive for them to run.

My Dreamcatcher just sits in the weatherproof enclosure now looking all forlorn. I’ll probably do something with it eventually.

Syed · 2024-10-29T17:24:07.552Z

I think @caveman99 has been able to repurpose his Dreamcatcher as a Meshtastic device. Is that right?

saveitforparts · 2024-10-29T18:31:42.145Z

That would be interesting, I’m just getting into Meshtastic as well. I’m on a couple Discords for that, so I’ll have to ask around!

Maybe I’ll set up a more permanent antenna and keep an eye on this until it dies. I’ve been using my folding dish so it’s not really suitable for all-weather operation.

caveman99 · 2024-10-29T20:37:58.213Z

yes, absolutely, the latest versions of the Dreamcatcher are ESP32 based and i have finished Meshtastic support for the 2206 and 2301 cards. The older incarnations can be supported too, but as they are running the SX1280 chip they will work on 2.4 GHZ band only. The newer ones are LR112x based wideband versions and can servce both Meshtatic sub-GHz and the 2.4G band.

I have a 2206 card myself but looking for a tester with a 2301 that can confirm its working

caveman99 · 2024-10-29T20:38:49.306Z

nice video on Meshtastic by the way!

tylerhoot · 2024-10-31T16:32:15.867Z

Iet me know If you get it working good on the 915mhz the is unlicensed band as it would make a great base station @Syed this could be a cool way to reincarnate of the dream catcher board and even make a new product. That I may be interested in.

caveman99 · 2024-11-18T08:41:56.439Z

Regarding Meshtastic support: this will not be available on the older Allwinner based Dreamcatcher boards (Dreamcatcher 3.xx), although if someone has a generic linux running on them it can for sure be cross-compiled as a daemon process. I don’t intend to work on this though.

There have been a few prototypes with the ESP32S2 i’ll call ‘Dreamcatcher 4’. I have support working for these, but it’s unpublished at the moment cause i am not sure how many of these are in the wild. I don’t want to clutter the firmware tree.

The main Meshtastic firmware can be compiled at the moment to support either the Dreamcatcher 2206 or 2301. Support is already in the main firmware at firmware/variants/dreamcatcher at master · meshtastic/firmware · GitHub, but i can only test the 2206 version (which is working fine on either 900MHz ISM or 2.4G). If someone with a 2301 board wants to test, i can provide firmware binaries and installation instructions.

tylerhoot · 2024-11-20T17:38:30.162Z

I’ll have to double check what version of the dream catcher 4 that I have and I’ll report back

tylerhoot · 2024-12-01T02:00:10.576Z

i have the 2206 model @caveman99 so if you could provide the directions on how to re flash this would be great.

Jonvw · 2024-12-10T14:03:19.063Z

I’ve got a 2301 I could test on if you can link me to some firmware to load.