My latest feeder design

[k8gd9rza]

I thought I might share some pictures of my latest feeder. This one is off to Western Australia.

I ran out of suitable glands for the antenna cable, so ended up cutting a slot in the enclosure and using a little bit of silicone sealant instead.

inside.jpg

It is powered from 24v passive PoE (pins 4+5 (blue) are +24v DC and pins 7+8 (brown) are ground). Crimping the cable like this is simple and it works, but it's limited to 100Mbit. This is an RPi3 B+, so I could use the PoE pin header on the board and get 1 Gig.

overview.jpg

I've been getting really good results with the FlightAware antenna and pro stick. The Coax cable is just a 1 metre LLC200 SMA to N-Male connector. Cable tied to the coax lead is a piece of Coax-Seal

[Coxy]

Looks good, Where in WA are you placing it?

Any advantage on using POE rather than standard power and WIFI connection ? and do you get any interference on the dongle from the PI being so close?

[k8gd9rza]

Looks good, Where in WA are you placing it?
Any advantage on using POE rather than standard power and WIFI connection ? and do you get any interference on the dongle from the PI being so close?

It's going to be installed in Waikiki, about 40Km south of Perth.

I generally try to use ethernet where possible, but I have a similar receiver at my mothers place that is only powered with PoE and uses 2.4GHz WiFi for connectivity. It doesn't seem to have any interference issues and regularly picks up aircraft from 150+ nm away.

The PoE just makes things easier for me. I run a wireless ISP with lots of solar powered hilltop sites. Almost all of the gear at these sites runs off 24v or 48v PoE, so PoE is convenient.

On the topic of interference, some of our hilltop Raspberry Pi based ADS-B feeders are also LoRaWAN gateways running (receiving and transmitting) on 915-928 MHz. I only have about 80cm separation between antennas, but there is no noticeable interference there either.

[Coxy]

It's going to be installed in Waikiki, about 40Km south of Perth.

I generally try to use ethernet where possible, but I have a similar receiver at my mothers place that is only powered with PoE and uses 2.4GHz WiFi for connectivity. It doesn't seem to have any interference issues and regularly picks up aircraft from 150+ nm away.

The PoE just makes things easier for me. I run a wireless ISP with lots of solar powered hilltop sites. Almost all of the gear at these sites runs off 24v or 48v PoE, so PoE is convenient.

On the topic of interference, some of our hilltop Raspberry Pi based ADS-B feeders are also LoRaWAN gateways running (receiving and transmitting) on 915-928 MHz. I only have about 80cm separation between antennas, but there is no noticeable interference there either.

I have thought about a remote rig but haven't figured out the setup. I am assuming you have a portable wifi setup dongle, and a battery/solar panel. I tried this but my solar panel wasn't big enough to charge the battery. Do you have any details on your set up?

[k8gd9rza]

I have thought about a remote rig but haven't figured out the setup. I am assuming you have a portable wifi setup dongle, and a battery/solar panel. I tried this but my solar panel wasn't big enough to charge the battery. Do you have any details on your set up?

It would be very hard to justify the cost of installing a remote rig unless you had some other reason for the gear to be there. Being a wireless ISP, we have a commercial business requirement to negotiate leases on hilltop sites and to have solar, batteries and fast internet to them, so provided there is an excess of solar energy, it's zero cost for us.

For example, this site has 660 watts of solar panels and 12.48kWh of battery capacity to support a 31 watt (average) load.
In New Zealand dollars, the raw solar components for this site come out at around $700 for the solar panels, $300 for a solar controller and $2400 worth of batteries - That's a ton of money to feed data for fun!
solar1.jpg

This site has 300 watts of solar panel and 3.84kWh of battery capacity to support a 12 watt (average) load.
solar2.png

A lot of the calculations come down to a requirement for 24 hour, 365 days a year unattended access. If it's acceptable for gear to go offline after a run of cloudy days around the middle of winter, the costs will be less.

For what it's worth, I tested a Raspberry Pi based feeder over 4G data in a busy area (near Auckland airport, NZ's busiest airport) and it used 1.6GB per month to send it to FlightRadar and FlightAware.

Last attached image is of a basic mains powered site. We power this site with 48V DC (This is the highest voltage we can use in NZ without compliance issues) over approx 500 metres of cable. Inside the enclosure is a small 12V 70Ah battery which will keep a 14 watt load running for approx 24 hours in a power cut

[Coxy]

Oh i see , you are killing two birds with one stone as you already have the infrastructure. 1.6 gig shesh i didnt imagine it would be that much.

[HAm]

Hi, I am running a remote feeder, EFVA13 in the Gulf of Bothnia at my summerhouse in the archipelago between Sweden and Finland.
I have 200 W of solar panels and 4.5 kWh of 12V
batteries. It goes down regulary in December and January when the days are approx 5h long up here. Running a Libre Computer LePotato, Flight Aware ProStick dongle and a 16 element Coaxial Colinear antenna. The network connection is a Huawei e3372h 4g-LTE dongle.
Normal weather gives me 230 - 280 Nm in my best direction but during high-pressure and heatwaves during summer, like that we hawe now, will give distances in excess of 350 Nm. But fr24 seems to restrict such distances to 349 Nm
Yesterday morning I could follow several planes for many minutes at about 420 Nm in southern sweden.
This is because of tropospheric ducting in the lower atmosphere, in warm air, meeting colder air above the much colder water.