RTL-SDRv3 Bias-T Toggle Functionality With ADSBx Custom Pi Image

Whilst a comprehensive deep-dive was not conducted, I did scroll through the Tutorials and Hardware categories and was a little flummoxed that this hasn't been raised yet. Wait, is this another one of those "Dude, it's literally the first line of instructions on the ADSBx Custom Pi Image page" things? Maybe? Oh well, that's what forums do, they repeat and restate the same information in 1,000,000 different ways.

So, I want to rock an LNA at my antenna like James recommended, AND try the new Gucci active PCB active antenna that's on the way to see if it does better than the passive version:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/124818598604

It cracks me up how these dinky looking printed circuit board looking rectangles always seem to dominate every other antenna I have tried.

So, I'm not skilled in the dark arts which show me how to get my nice ADSBx Custom Pi Image rocking Raspberry Pi 4 to tell the RTL-SDR v3 to up it's Bias-T game and send some current up the pipe!

If it involves doing hard stuff, remember who this is. I can flash the MicroSD Card, and I'm really good at putting it back into the computer, opening the config files and looking at stuff but not changing it because it's in Yiddish. I AM REALLY good at opening the WiFi Credential file, and properly entering that stuff, and I even push save before I yank it out. Is it that easy, like the WiFi thing?

I've seen the acronym "SSH" bandied about the forum-sphere from time to time, but I don't know how to even get that stupid thing going. Is that what's used to do these weird command line entry things you guys make look like turning on a TV? Do I need to pull up my big-analyst pants and learn how to remote in through SSH if I'm ever going to have a chance at rocking the RTL-SDRv3's native Bias-T function?

Dang it.....these never seem to be as concise as I think they will when I start. Oh well.

Thanks for the handholding!!!

 

Oh bless your hearts! I'm up in Massachusetts right now, so I can't try what you just gave me, or the coolness I finally rachet strapped myself down to learn over on the 5 year old's RasPi 101 website, until I fly my little Tomahawk back down to Mary-Land. I feel good about this Weed and Hoofs, I really do! I looked at your GitHub page, a site that frightens me to be at. No wonder this stuff is easy for you, you're one of the kids who actually rattles of the friggen 1's and 0's that make this whole world go!!! I've tried, I really have. When I first dropped into the home automation scene, I was totes jellies of all the kick butt automations these kids were doing. When I learned the name of the code it's all based on, Groovy, "hell yeah" I thought, "anything with a hippy name like that has got to be easy, right?" .... yeah, so, I can't do languages either. I tried Farsi, aka Persian, because I wanted to learn a bad guy language, and everyone said Farsi was easier for English speakers than Arabic because it was a "pleuritic" language. Never knew what that meant, and certainly wasn't rocking that course either.

With languages, coding, math, and standing up to pee, I think they all use the same brain centers, and I'm pretty sure mom made me go to sleep the hard way once or twice and that was the part that was deprived of the oxygen. With all of them, with the exception of the last example, I have no issues with memorizing vocab and standard stuff like whatever a "sudo" is. I was really good at sounding out words in Farsi, most of which I had no clue what they meant, but I was doing it. And then, in every case, inevitably there is a pivot in the material, and that's all she wrote. That pivot is when the syntax is different in any way to my native language, South Central Pimplish..... No, English. I cannot wrap my head around translating something like "Hey, that slightly humpty dump chick over there is actually kinda pretty" into the equivalent of "Humpty slightly HEY! dump chick over pretty there kinda is tomfoolery". My brain cannot compute.

So I simply got good a lurking the Samsung SmartThings forums, finding some Gucci homemade apps that would impress the guys on my curling team, and mastered, I mean MASTERED the use of Select ALL, CTRL C, CTRL V, ENTER, BOOOOM!!!! and just steal it all. They don't care or expect people not to, but I choose not to say thank you because I'm doing them a favor. Yeah, you know what THAT many thank you novels would look like? Sorta like this posting, only rinse and repeat until you pass out.

Ya think the part of the brain that allows people to self regulates the sheer volume of their musings is near the language/ coding/ peeing standing up brain centers? I'm sorta leaning towards maybe. James is a smart man, and not because of all his big braining here. Well, yes because of that, but also because he thinks ahead, assesses the probability of potential danger and takes pre-emptive action to mitigate the risk or completely castrate it. You know that book I wrote asking someone to write me a book? Of course you do, well, next time you and James are out running game at the pubs, make sure to give him an extra high five. What I posted there, well, that was actually the abridged version. Yeah, SOMEONE had the wherewithal to make sure the forum posts are limited to a paltry 10,000 characters. At first I was poo poo crabby pants about it, I mean, does he expect us to post in Morris Code?? I'm not even through my spin up paragraph at 10,000 characters! But then I remembered something that immediately settled me down and take the cat out of the dryer. I remembered that James, yeah, that guy is way smarter than me, so he probably did that for a smart reason. And I got to work scraping the fluff out, or at least the minimum amount of fluff to get in under the the counter.

And with that, I will close this piece out. After all, the driveway isn't going to draw chalk clowns on itself, now is it. Yes, I too wish that could somehow happen, but alas, the world disappoint us all once again. Good day, and always remember that I behave and write the way I do because it makes my tummy giggle wiggle.... And if if you can reach just 1 person, you're doin' alright!!!

 

Yeah, I'm trackin' on it now. The problem I kept running into was this gap in explanations with all the YouTube videos and online tutorials. Either the lesson was about the basic stuff of getting the sd card flashed and how to claim the feed, or what command to type to make it do stuff. No one was bridging the gap to show me where all this fancy typing was supposed to happen. The basic lessons stopped short, and the more complex lessons assumed I knew enough to type where I should. No, I wasn't like my mom who would have tried typing the commands in word or Google to see if that worked. One of the contributing factors to my struggles was the fact that the program a few were telling me to open and use was installed on my machine, but apparently didn't see a reason to add an icon in my programs list. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, but it's these types of nuanced oddities that have been a constant torn in my upper lip. Yeah, I thought it would be in my side, cause that's where thorns always go to irritate people, a thorn in their side. But my thorn was right in my upper lip, and wouldn't come out until I figured it out. Then it just disappeared, as if I had invented in my mind the entire time. Weird.

So, honestly, I've made more headway with this sophomore-level Raspberry Pi education in the last 48 hours then in every 48 hour period before .. combined. I'm not saying I'll be going so Zuckerberg at Harvard anytime soon, even if I could. There is precisely one stupid-rich individual living on this planet who I don't harbor a colostomy bag's worth of ill will for, who is ironically the one trying not to be on this planet at all. I dun LOVE me some Musk, rich piercing, steamy Musk, cause who wouldn't!? Seriously, he's the one billionaire who actually drops his fat stacks on initiatives which pretty much all have some sort of positive impact on the planet, the environment, and even on our entire species. No, not perfect, I wouldn't ask that of anyone, but when you compare his motives to those of his fellow need for greed crowd, for me there's no question. Guess what he didn't do. He didn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars and nearly a decade for the sake of a 3:00 minute float-a-thon below the Karmin Line, and then try and profess to be an astronaut? Please. All that money and time, and what do we have? A 10 minute joy ride exclusively for millionaires and above. Start the slow clap and cue the years of profound awe!!

The only reason we have a snow balls chance in Yemen (aka hell) of actually getting a human, nevermind a colony on Mars in our lifetime is because my man Musk is making it happen. When history looks back, if we manage to avoid exterminating ourselves as a species, I'm pretty sure the Musk will be amongst those who were the ones who made it happen. And Brittany Spears and Vanilla Ice as well... Obviously...

Ok, I'm done .. hmmm, let's see if I can polish this turd a little. So in closing, Raspberry Pi SSH and plenty of 1090MHz flight tracks and RF amplifiers, but also SDR and Nano 3 Bias-T.

Ok, good talk... I think this helped....

 

You're absolutely right, that was an erroneous statement. The Nano 3 is our standard go-to SDR, but once I get back I'm going to start seeing how the naked RTL-SDR v3 will fit.