Off-Grid Solar Design, Education and Advice

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August 13, 2026 3:38 pm

This isn't strictly under the solar heading but I thought I'd share a project I'm currently working on. * I had a wireless OSO Internet connection which involved a dish on a cut-off tree near the sol... View MoreThis isn't strictly under the solar heading but I thought I'd share a project I'm currently working on. * I had a wireless OSO Internet connection which involved a dish on a cut-off tree near the solar shed. The ethernet cable from that was buried inside a PVC pipe and it goes over to the solar shed. I now have fiber, the dish has been removed. * I've been thinking of adding some project—a Raspberry Pi computer perhaps—atop that 4' stump. I just didn't know what to do with it. I didn't want to add a solar panel for the Pi computer since then I'd also need to add a battery so that it could run at night. I also didn't want to push a power cord or wires back through that pipe. It seemed prudent to send power for the Pi over the ethernet cable itself, "PoE" or power-over-ethernet. A recent trip to a military surplus store in Albuquerque netted me some RJ-45 (ethernet) jacks. A couple of days ago I "rolled my own" PoE connections both in the solar shed and out there on the stump. I'm now successfully shipping power to the remote site for the Pi computer. The earlier (gifted) Dell computer "Delaware" decided to die within a few short days of service so it's been retired. The new Raspberry Pi computer is named "Edgar" due to its power setup. That's all happy and is running a 64-bit version of the Linux operating system. I spent a few enjoyable hours doing some 64-bit ARM assembly language coding on the Pi computer. But I've been now scratching my head and wondering what options I might have. 1. Buy a hardware device so that I can do SDR (software-defined radio). 2. Use the Pi to query the FAA's flight data to identify what planes are flying overhead. Technically, with an SDR I can listen over the radio waves for those same air traffic ADSB signals. The SDR would be seriously cool stuff. If the hardware device also transmits then I can also transmit stuff myself. Sadly, the best and lowest-cost option for that hardware is from a small company that's having serious supply problems from Chinese-made chips. You can't really find his product. So for now, I'm using a free web query to ask essentially the FAA to tell me all the overhead flights within a ten-mile radius. It seems to work. Yay. Now I've got to do something interesting with the results of that query.

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