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Author Topic: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?  (Read 998 times)

IC8CYV

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Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« on: June 07, 2020, 05:50:45 AM »

Bought a Pi3B+ a little over a year ago to use it as a music streamer but got an old MacMini which does the job much better and in an easier way so now I have the Pi board available and was thinking to make some HAM application with it, either on its own with a dongle for, say, SDR or in conjunction with the FT897 which I also plan to revive (sitting on a shelf unused due to poor QTH with not much sky available).

What would you suggest to do with it?

Grazie

Giovanni
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G4AON

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2020, 06:28:33 AM »

One of the best Ham uses for a Pi is to mount an MMDVM board on it and use it with a 70cm digital hand held to connect via the internet on DMR, D-Star or Fusion. You do need a digital radio, but the add on boards are cheap, around 20 euro (or less) on eBay and the Pi-Star software is free.

An example board from China is eBay item 312737246821
Many eBay sellers offer these boards, some have displays which can be useful but not essential.

https://www.pistar.uk/

73 Dave
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K4KRW

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2020, 08:03:58 AM »

Buy a flightaware SDR dongle.  Put up a 1090 MHz antenna.  Run piaware on the pi.  You can watch most of the air traffic in your area.  It will feed data to flightaware and you will get a free flightaware account.

It is a neat app.  I pull it up from time to time to see what is in the area.  From Charlotte, NC I can pull in transponders from much of NC, parts of VA, TN and SC.  It is a really nice diversion.

73 Richard
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IC8CYV

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2020, 08:50:05 AM »

Buy a flightaware SDR dongle.  Put up a 1090 MHz antenna.  Run piaware on the pi.  You can watch most of the air traffic in your area.  It will feed data to flightaware and you will get a free flightaware account.

It is a neat app.  I pull it up from time to time to see what is in the area.  From Charlotte, NC I can pull in transponders from much of NC, parts of VA, TN and SC.  It is a really nice diversion.

73 Richard

Thought about either ACARS since I am a flight passionate or SDR so that I could try and listen through a Mac Laptop when around, good idea, thanks.

Which kind of dongles would do both?
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VE2LG

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2021, 05:02:53 AM »

Bought a Pi3B+

What would you suggest to do with it?

Grazie

Giovanni

My suggest is SatNOGS
 This is a satellite monitoring station  https://network.satnogs.org/
  VE2LG  Real
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K3JOE

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #5 on: April 25, 2021, 06:09:14 AM »

Install HamPi on A SDCard and use it as a station or mobile computer. I run FT8 with mine and there are many more ham programs to use on HamPi
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WO7R

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #6 on: April 25, 2021, 06:13:29 AM »

It's a bit of work to configure, but one of my primary uses for a Raspberry Pi is to deploy "Samba" (also known as SMB) on it.

Microsoft simply calls it shared folders.  Basically, it is Microsoft's version of a networked drive or networked tree of folders.  If you have your Pi on your home network, this allows easy shifting of files (until they get to be _very_ large) from one PC to another.

I don't know how/whether Mac deploys this as I don't have a Mac, but it probably supports it long since.

You can share things like JPEGs and basic text documents easily enough this way.  I concentrate on stuff that is essentially public and doesn't require a lot of security, though that is available if one wants it.

When I do this, I make sure a second Raspbian account has all the "sudo" type authorities and the expected user ID -- Pi -- is reduced to having minimal authority and a non-default password.
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KX4OM

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #7 on: April 25, 2021, 11:22:38 AM »

Echoing WO7R's post, I use my Pi3B+ as a file server. I keep all of my files on it so I don't have to constantly shift files around multiple PCs and laptops. I use Samba, Raspbian and the Windows Network Files application. It maps one shared folder of about 175GB to my PCs. All of the folders on the server Hard drive (Ham and Computer documents) that I share are subfolders that go through that shared folder.

When I get the network set up again after damage to the house I'll buy a Pi4, the 2GB RAM version. It will handle what I need to do with the low RAM, and the main thing I'm upgrading from the 3B+ is that Pi4 has USB3. The server hard drive connection to USB will transfer much faster.

Ted, KX4OM
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N6YWU

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #8 on: May 30, 2021, 02:19:42 PM »

Use it for radio stuff.

I have my Raspberry Pi's (3B+ and 4) connected to 3 USB SDR devices (RTL-SDR V3, Airspy HF+ Discovery, and RSP2), each connected to a different antenna (VHF discone, HF vertical, and LOG/loop-on-ground for MF/LF SWL).  Then I can connect remotely (from the couch, or porch on a nice day) to one of the Raspberry Pi's from my Mac, iPad, or iPhone, and listen to SFO air traffic, or check for HF band openings, etc.  I also occasionally run some FT8 or WSPR skimmers on one of the Pi's.

The Pi 3B+ also has a TAPR 20M WSPR board on top, so it can actually transmit a QRP WSPR beacon using a GPIO pin.
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IC8CYV

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2022, 11:20:44 PM »

Hello, hope this finds you all doing well,

I already own a NAS at home which I use to share multimedia files through the network so the Pi sits unused in a drawer, used it for a little while as an uncompressed music server to stream music to a DAC and then my stereo system but found an old MacMini to do the same purpose in a much easier and less troublesome way so the Pi remains unused.

Air Traffic Control always intrigued me but wondering what else could I do with it, SDR intrigues me but my guess is that an USB dongle paired to my MacBook would do that much easier (would be fun to try and receive some traffic while on the go since from home I have a very limited portion of sky available to set up aerials), what would you use the Pi3+ for spending the less possible onto it?

Grazie
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WB8VLC

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #10 on: February 17, 2022, 11:04:51 AM »

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AA7IS

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #11 on: January 05, 2023, 05:19:51 PM »

HamClock!
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G8FXC

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2023, 12:55:25 AM »

HamClock!

I'll second that - an excellent application for it! Build the headless version and display it via a web browser - that way you can access it from anywhere in the house...

Martin (G8FXC)
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AA7IS

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Re: Got a spare Pi3B+ - what to do with it?
« Reply #13 on: January 12, 2023, 12:40:14 PM »

I'm running it on a Rpi 4 B with 4 gig ram and I think it's overkill.
I'd love to figure out how to load it on a much cheaper Banana PI any ideas???
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