Othernet

Happy New Year to all of gopherspace! Santa
(my wife) bought me a receiver for Othernet for
Christmas [1]. The main website is unfortunately
filled with weird marketing which is odd considering
it would really only appeal to nerds like myself
at this point. I'll summarize the setup and purpose
here instead.

Othernet's eventual goal seems to be to broadcast
news, weather, radio, and content like Wikipedia
to countries where the internet is restricted or
otherwise compromised. For now, they'll sell
boards and antennas to hobbyists like myself to
receive their signals. They've also thrown a bone
to ham radio operators by including an APRS tie-in.
If you are a ham and you send a message to "OUTNET",
it will be rebroadcast to all Othernet receivers.
This is very much a novelty and Othernet itself
doesn't really have anything to do with ham radio
other than a large portion of its userbase happening
to be hams.

Setup

Othernet has bought space on two geostationary
satellites, one covering North America and the
other covering Europe. The guide here [2] has the
goods on setting up the receiver. I used a camera
tripod to hold the LNB (with duct tape!)

By the way, LNB stands for "Low Noise Block Downconverter"
and it combines an antenna and several other components,
namely a downconverter. The frequency these satellites
operate at is in the Ku band (12-18 GHz). Signals
at these frequencies would require expensive feedline
to carry the signal to receivers, so they are
downconverted by the LNB so good old coaxial
cable can be used.

So, I "mount" the LNB on the tripod after following
the guide to flash the SD cards with the OS for
the Dreamcatcher board. I used the dishpointer
website in the guide to point the LNB appropriately
and connected 50' of RG6 coax to the Dreamcatcher inside.
It worked on basically the first try much to my surprise.

I was able to get into the Dreamcatcher web interface,
which is quite polished and allows access to the included
apps and diagnostics to ensure the LNB is pointed
properly. I kept the Tuner app up to see the progress
as it downloaded news articles and Wikipedia pages.
I was able to listen to radio at the same time.
The quality was decent and seemed to play a
combination of news/talk and music.
News articles are available from several sources
and are delightfully text-and-images only. Weather
data came in eventually and the included app has
a nice weather animation for wind and temperature.
A couple Wikipedia articles rolled in, but I'm
unclear how they decide which ones to broadcast.
Next I tested the APRS functionality and sure enough,
I received my test message sent using the APRSDroid
app connected to a Baofeng.

The next step will be a more permanent installation.
I'm sure I can get one of my neighbors to give me
an old, unused satellite dish, where I will replace
its LNB with the Othernet one. This will increase
signal strength (that's what the dish part is for -
reflecting signals!). I have easy access to my roof
and a very clear view of the sky, so I haven't
needed to use a larger dish or make a horn as
described in the setup guide. Your mileage may vary.

At $69, the Dreamcatcher receiver is definitely worth
playing with. Let me know if you get one and how
it works out for you!

[1] https://othernet.is
[2] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0770/0935/files/Dreamcatcher_V3.05.pdf?25