I mentioned earlier in another thread that I am working towards moving my primary feeder off my roof and on to a hill behind me, with a potential to get me out of the valley I'm in possibly to as much 650' AMSL, but certainly more that 400' and way better that the 145' I am at now (range less than 100 NM max). I have found a reasonably priced 100 Mbs ethernet over coax solution good to 2000' of RG-6 cable that also delivers 16 Watts at 12 V, which I will convert to 5V for the Pi4b in the plastic case ADSB Exchange feeder kit currently on my test bench. It used to be my primary feeder KUUNANET. Anyhow, my outdoor feeder wants the fan aspirated case. I've added heat sinks to the Pi4b chips, removed the 978 dongle (Never see 978 traffic in Hawaii, except one old doctor with a really old Cessna), disabled WiFi to save power etc. The case in the picture is a used Pelican case I got for cheap on ebay. The case has passed water proofing tests with all the case reinforcement for the mast and cable entry machining done, both in the rain and with a few hours of garden hose water. Next test is thermal management. I have had a Zigbee temperature sensor in the case during the waterproofing tests and internal temp hits 100F peak. I've just added a stood off aluminum heat shield to the case and will monitor temps for a week or so before I add the electronics and test run the whole rig on 2000' of coax still on the reel. Then final steps of ant proofing, simplified installation sequencing If anyone gives a S**t, LMK and I'll continue to post and share my shopping list. Note also the nice Soylent ADSB Exchange Sticker too James!
Discord would't let me post a long message, so My comments to James follow. KUUNANET_LIH when it goes indoors to Kauai at my SIL's house, so no worries on temp and humidity for those two. KUUNANET3 is currently on my roof with the Pi indoors and is my regular feeder. Now the main event. The feeder now named KUUNANET_NGF (currently offline while I mess with the outdoor enclosure) is the one going up the hill behind me to get me out of the valley. It used to be named KUUNANET and is the ADSBX plastic case kit with fan I bought from you. Go over to the Forums (where you have been absent lately) to see my progress. It's Pelican case with a sheet of aluminum (tied to ground of course) inside the top cover to make the mast attachment sturdier and prevent top of case deflection that would weaken the watertight gaskets, a sheet of 1/2" HDPE glued to the exterior of the case, again for mast stiffness and water tightness. The mast is 1-1/4" PVC, and all joints are O ringed. When deployed, there will be 100% silicone RTV everywhere as a last step since I have to carry this for a mile up a 600" hill broken down for transport. I left it outside in full sun and rain for two weeks and no leaks or condensation, but according to the Smarthings Zigbee temp sensor I left inside, internal case temp hit 100F at noon most days with no electronic load. So, I added 1.5" plastic spacers on top of the HDPE slab and an 18 Ga. full sheet aluminum baking pan ($22 on Amazon) as a solar shield. Note my sassy camo paint too and the Soylent Green ADSB sticker. There is a public hiking trail up there too, so a camo net will be added that will also reduce solar load. It's been cloudier lately, but internal case temp is down to 87F max at solar noon, a 13F reduction. I can watch temps real time with minute/hour/day data graphs from Smarthings. Once I get a full week of blazing sun, I'll start installing the electronics and test thermals again.. Still waiting the power over coax ethernet TX/RX pair, SMA surge suppresser and the POC suppressor as well. Meanwhile I've measured power consumption of the feeder on my bench supply and its under 8W. The POC transmitter is stated as 8w max, but I'll measure that too when it arrives. The maker gave me a pair for free on condition that I review it fairly. Then I will run the whole rig with the coax on the spool and monitor temps, and decide what other thermal management I need. Right now, there are only 2 holes in the Pelican case (used on Ebay with complete foam for $50), one for the mast that encloses 5' of KMR400, and a 3/4" raintight gland connector for the coax entry and the ground exit. I also plan to add commercial grade desiccant packs as a humidity backup.. I do have some experience deploying remote instrumentation. About 6 years ago I placed 3 solar powered instrument packages with 35 AH batteries in Pelican cases for the National Park Service out on the lava fields where the internal case temp went to 110F easily every day. The instruments with the included weather stations, audio recorders and sound level monitoring worth north of $12K per case worked flawlessly for the contracted 45 days of data collection. I got 300 GB of data, all time synched across the three locations and three datasets - ANSI 1 sound, levels, full weather data and audio recordings. Sorry I digress here (no TRIGGER intended), just want to let you know I am dead serious about getting my home feeder out of this damn valley I'm in!
Internals complete. Waiting for my 2500' spool of coax. What's in the box? E-Link Ethernet on coax, with PoE and separate 12V output, ADSB-X Pi4b kit, 1090 only, Wifi disabled, 3 added heat sinks on the Pi, ADSB-X 1090 filter, surge arrestors on antenna and CoaX adapter, 5V 5A buck converter off the 12 VDC, 12V 50 mm fan, 8 AWG hard copper ground wires
PS: The white D shaped object sitting in a foam cutout is a Samsung Smarthings Temp / Humidity / vibration monitor. I'll be wathing the internal case temp when testing....
First pass at thermal testing and looking for voltage drop-outs at the Pi in progress indoors with short cables. Still don't have my 2500' spool of Quad RG-6. Lash up with some bad adaptors, but now stable in the sealed Pelican case. PoC adaptor with a 56VDC 125W power supply and the case without the mast shown in my office. E-Link told me I could operate the 48VDC PoC system on 56VDC without harm, so that's what I'm doing to make sure I get 16 Watts at the 12V terminal on the far end. Feeder has been up for 3 hours now, and I'll check temps and for voltage dropouts in the morning.
24 Hours uptime with no complaints about voltage sags, ethernet packet loss issues etc. from the GUI based ADSB-X image. Max Pi4b core temp 48 C. Max. Internal case temp via Smarthings is 81 F max of 24 hours. I'm liking this PoC adaptor so far.
Wifi, BT and all Pi4B leds are disabled for power / heat / reliability reasons. Still have not found out how to disable Pi 4B HDMI to save power and heat. Internal case air temp peaks at 95F. Pi core temp stays under 50C at peak. No Pi 4B under voltage conditions reported in the logs. PoC adapter runs with less heat and power consumption than expected. I recommend this E-Link product so far.
I think I have the HDMI disabled, but the new Pi 4b video driver does not use the TVSERVICE commands. What I tried was to update the Raspi Config utility to the latest version which seems to allow full video shutdown, like the old TVSERVICE command does. Still testing. I also found a link that I lost claiming that by forcing the Pi 4b to use 100 Mb ethernet, that I could shave 250 mA of power consumption. Sadly, I can't find that link again, despite checking the history file and more googling. Since my power / Ethernet adaptor only runs fast ethernet anyhow, maybe the Pi is smart enough to shed load, but I'd like to verify this by testing, and I'm still waiting for my big spool of Quad RG-6. Any opinions out there?
Latest update while still waiting for 2000' of un-spliced quad shield cable: Improved heatsinking under the PoC adaptor with a thin aluminum plate and a thermal putty pad. Eliminated ty-wraps mostly (except the red re-useable one securing the PS choke) by using industrial Velcro. Added a calibrated thermostatically controlled secondary fan from junk box parts. Removed a SAW filter and installed a 4-pole cavity filter mentioned in my other threads. Installed shortened custom built jumper cables for ethernet and RG-6 PoC. It's now almost tool less to maintain since this will be somewhat inaccessible location and mu old legs can't walk up there often. Thermal tested again with Pi core temps under 55C. All I need is the damn RG-6 cable to get this feeding, and replace Kuunanet3.
