Why do we need Othernet, besides education and economic development?
This time it is Belarus with their internet lines cut.
They are in the Astra 3B footprint, not sure if we have any hardware on the ground though.
1 Like
Excellent point - - exactly the value of Othernet. I canât imagine a Musk-like satellite internet system would be allow to operate in Belarus either.
By the way - - the Othernet Astra 3B footprint is bigger than you illustrated
They are on the Ku-band Pan-Europe Beam. Ken (Long time Othernet supporter)
2 Likes
Are you sure it is the pan-euro beam?
I think the current beam is the regular central euro beam, I can cross check frequency ot the transponder/beam, it would make sense though by what Syed has said. I am almost certain that he has never explicitly said it is the pan euro beam.
I checked my notes,
âMyâ dreamcatcher is currently located near the Dead Sea by a friend of mine but the family is busy and has bad phone connectivity. According to them they can rx a reasonable SNR from the pan euro beam transponders but cant rx the transponders with the frequency that euro beam which the Othernet signal is on at all when they connect a DVB-S2 TV tuner to the LNB/dish and scan Astra 3B. I think we get wide beam lite due to the tight signal on an otherwise quiet slice of frequency which gives a great SNR through the LNB making even the edges able to RX with a bare LNB.
edit:
As I understand Starlink LEO birds are not currently interconnected(but will use laser links, maybe on another generation of hardware?) and for now just up/down link from nearby earth stations so apparently without friendly ground there is no useful Starlink.
Yes - - I m sure. Syed @Syed will confirm this, but look at the location of a user in Gibraltar. Heâs not in the Europe Beam, but he in the Pan-Europe beam. Ken
1 Like
If you follow this chart below down to othernetâs feed at 11.6812420
https://www.lyngsat.com/Astra-3B.html
It says Europe beam not Pan-euro
Is our Gibraltar station using a dish?
I think Jim Watt @jimwatt is our user in Gibraltar, but canât find his post talking about his setup. Maybe heâll respond to this. Ken
1 Like
We are on the Astra 3B Ku Wide Beam. The public contour maps are a little different from the ones I have seen directly from SES, which show hot spots over Germany and Poland. Gibraltar is within the coverage area, but it will take a larger antenna for reception.
2 Likes
I had a 1m dish spare in Gibraltar so am using that which get a very strong signal.
The footprint I found suggested a wide area coverage.
2 Likes
@Syed can you post maps you got direct from SES?
I would love to have you dump whatever non-NDA tech and even sales docs from SES, Inmarsat, or any other competitors into a public directory for us to dig through.
(struck incorrect statements in above posts)
All of these companies require NDAs right of the bat, so I canât share anything they have given me directly.
1 Like
Back to Belarus though⌠brainstorming here.
The best solution is a Dreamcatcher and bare or dished LNB, which is perfect for an Othernet affiliated organization to set out a fixed or mobile Earth-station and all-in-one wifi rebroadcast the archive and news to anyone in range. It is the best way for a community to have Othernet.
I do not know how much of a channel we have to use but, what if we were to split the signal between Dreamcatcher mode and something similar Toosheh where individuals without a Dreamcatcher could use a regular FTA setup with a USB flash PVR, these are like $25 for LNB, cable, and cheap DVB-S2 TV decoder as well as an offset dish and a USB flash drive.
So proposal is to broadcast say 23hrs a day of real Othernet tight signal for bare LNB Dreamcatchers, then go to a wide fallback/personal mode with as much useful data as we can squeeze into that window for those who for whatever reason canât receive or use a Dreamcatcher. Toosheh has a phone or windows app to convert the PVR files to I assume some sort of redundant formated zip and then presents a daily bundle of media.
I am just thinking how we can flex the technology Othernet already has in hand to reach both the communities the Othernet aims for while also serving individuals who are too late to realize they wanted Othernet hardware when the need strikes. Or people in a situation where an easy-ish hack using only commodity hardware is their only option.
The PVR mode might also be good for publicity and increase the target user base of people who do the PVR hack until the community can buy or get sponsored for a Dreamcatcher station.
Hi Biketool - - getting back to the basics, Iâve been a supporter of Othernnet for several years, and mainly focus on issues of content and reception.
Belrus is one of many areas in the world lacking viable news content (at least I say that as an American with no political ax to grind). Othernetâs signal can penetrate areas needing unfiltered news content. I also find Othernet very valuable here in Washington, DC, to know what is going on when local media is off in âleft fieldâ.
Iâve taken my portable terminal all over the world in my travels when Othernet was in L-band and the current Ku-band to find out what is happening. It is interesting that the Dreamcatcher boards are made in China which is loath to Othernet content!
If Dreamcatchers can get into those countries that need them, it will be the âshort waveâ of the 21st Century. Thatâs where Othernet needs to go. Ken
2 Likes
@kenbarbi shortwave is exactly the model I think is needed too.
Being the only game in âtownâ with this service or news there is a need probably need to go for a deeper buffet approach, representative feeds from US, UK, EU, Russia, China, Turkish, Suni, Shia, Israeli, Irish, Australia, Swiss, Swedish, Austrian, Japanese, Thai, Indian, etc without going too deep into national propaganda or at least provide balance.
The Dreamcatcher hardware while ideal for the community model, leaves a demographic and adoption gap including availability and single location manufacturing vs something a person with a computer and some parts could hack together.
In my opinion we need a standardized bin lib for the DVB-S crypto and an effort to foster either a second DIY-able receiver project and/or if possible a percentage of the day dedicated to something we can hack a Toosheh like PVR commodity receiver.
1 Like
There are (or were) a lot of dreambox clones out of China which were well made and ran linux. They come with lots of memory a Ethernet port and either a SD or HD receiver. The interest used to be decoding $ky using CCcam and then OSCam with a receiver acting as a server for a group of other receivers. GPON and IPTV has more or less killed off DTH sattv or the small communal installations we used to have locally. Nearby in the south of Spain there is still interest in receiving the unofficial BBC satback service which delivers a number of UK terrestrial channels to hacked receivers. I know an installer with 600+ clients who was dreading what would happen as Intelsat 907 was end of life. Its been replaced by Intelsat 901 which has been ârefueledâ and is good for another 5 years.
2 Likes
The dreamboxes are sort of cool, but they run a TiVo-ized kind of Linux not unlike a rando Chinese Android phone, aside from often not releasing their changes to FOSS code they are full of bin blobs and off standard hacks. Not the easiest system to work with beyond playing with config files if you can even serial/SSH/telnet into the box. If we had full tech knowledge though it would probably be $20 and a custom firmware way to some form of Othernet without needing a DVB-S2 standard video/audio channel and then converting a currently not transmitted Toosheh like PVR file of that, though we would also need the Othernet crypto libs which can probably be extracted from a Dreamcatcher.
How are people hacking these satellites? Is it just having a a bunch of BISS codes or something?
I bought a few $10 KOQIT from a guy name Ali who Express mailed it to me I plan to install a RTL-SDR tapped into the feed before the receiver demodulater mostly as an easier way to get a cheap stable power supply with both polarity voltages and bias-T, there is also an alt firmware for it if you want to do the 6 Amateur TV channels direct without a LNB on 33cm band though it removes the FTA satellite scanning.
Some Dreambox software is open source, but I never got as far as compiling it. I got some aggression on the developers forum for mentioning Chinese clones and saying they were well made. After I worked out the setup the receivers in question worked 24x7 flawlessly for around 5 years until the services ceased and probably still work today. Nothing wrong with good Chinese engineering. To extract BISS codes you need 400Gb of rainbow tables and a fast PC with a large CUDA card. I put mine on in the winter to heat the place processing seti@home which it also does rather well.These days I have a IPTV box which includes the F1 races in HD and the service is totally legal and I donât have to pretend to be someone else to get a subscription. The golden days of DTH sattv are gone. Which is why I have a spare dish for Othernet.
Hey guys can use Othernet in new Zealand?
1 Like
Not yet, there are only satellite footprints over North America and Europe currently.
More coverage is a future step after gathering sponsors and partnerships to get more coverage beyond the early adopter experimental and development people and on to the targeted populations without regular internet service.
1 Like