I want to put the antenna for my setup in. the loft, but the access to the router is in the room below. A bit of background: I have a Raspi 3B+,and a Piaware Proplus USB. I will need 5-6 meters of cable. The loft temperature varies from -6 to 40 degrees centigrade/25 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so if I locate the Raspi in the loft then I will need a fan and heat-sinks. The options as I see them are the following 1 put the Raspberry Pi in the loft and run an Ethernet 6 low loss network cable from the loft to the room below 2 put the Raspberry Pi in the loft and extend the antenna cable to the room below. Would I need an amplifier or is the PiAware Pro Plus USB stick to amplify the signal enough . 3 I think I'm right in saying that the pro plus USB stick gets power from the USB socket on the Raspberry Pi 3, so does that mean that I could extend the USB cable, with the voltage drop (or would a powered USB hub solve this?) and put the Raspberry Pi in the room below the loft I have loaded TeamViewer and Zerotier onto the Raspberry Pi so I hope that means I can access It across the network without continually plugging in the Raspberry Pi to a keyboard and screen I would appreciate people's comments on the practicability and power loss over the 5-6 meters brought about by extending one of the wires to the room below the loft, or is there another solution that I've not thought about. Thanks in advance for your wise words of advice
I would suggest another option. Leave raspberry with stick connected in your room. Use 5-6m long good quality coax (pre-assembled if you don't have proper tools fe. https://www.modmypi.com/raspberry-pi/communication-1068/sma-male-to-n-type-male-antenna-cable-5m) to connect antenna installed in the loft. Loss in cable will be low, you shouldn't even notice it. FA Pro+ stick has built-in amplifier. In local network you can access Pi using PuTTY (SSH) or VNC if you installed desktop version of Raspbian. TeamViewer or Zerotier are needed only in case of remote access.
The Pi are pretty tough. In the loft with power and USB fan for some airflow would likely be fine. We run them in the attic and outdoors at 130F with a fan and heatsinks. Good cable has low loss, so no issue there until you hit greater than 15-20 meters. 5-6 meters is fine. USB cable voltage drop is real, SDR use a lot of power and can be sensitive. You could use a powered hub tho, overkill. Solution 1 or 2 is best and easiest. PoE powered PI in the attic in a box with a fan ... take the plastic over off the FA SDR. Not everyone has PoE or wants to spend another $20-$40 for PoE. I run one on from garage using USB outlet, I wired up in the attic.
Nice but you will need extra cooling. Why do you think you'll need antenna cable extended to the room below? Everything will placed be in the loft. USB stick is powered from Pi. You can try to use active USB cable or powered USB hub. Calculate costs of each solution. And choose best one for you.
The Pi can withstand attic heat but isn't the USB stick's RF sensitivity affected by high temperature? I recall reading something about this at least for the RTL-SDR dongle
The newer 820T2 Sticks seems not to have significant frequency problems in the heat. I use "blue" 820T2 with cheap china filter and moonraker adjustable amplifier in the attic (up to 55 deg. cels. on hot days, then 5m of USB cable and the Raspi 3B+ one floor down in my ham radio shack. +5V for the raspi got by car charger 2,1 amps, the +12V for the moonraker direct from my 12V house installation, together with some RTX... Antenna is DIY 10ele CoCo with about 5m RG213 Coax. Up to 200 miles seems to be ok...feeding FR24, FA, OSN, PF, RB, ADSBx, ADSBHub. At same location OGN Station (868 MHz FLARM) in same manner.. In the north there is a mountain... location is near Kassel.
