Tony is a Geek

...and that is not THIS type of Lorra Lorra laughs : Cyla Black although, my laughs were more tears of woe and then tears of joy-ish What is LoRa and why is it spelt that way? well, you could DuckDuckGo and search for it, however, simple description: "Lo-ng Ra-nge comms" . [UPDATE: okay, I'll answer the question, "why bother? why not just use WiFi?" - that is such a non-Gen X question.  Right. WiFi sucks a LOT of power, I mean a LOT.  It also requires an AP (access point), one device will have to be a gateway router for one device to connect to the other... and also, well, the "LoRa" name says it all... can you move your laptop outside your house, walk down the street, keep walking, keep walking some more and still get a signal to that WiFi AP? no. no you cannot. Ah, ha, then you'll attempt to be smart and say, "4G" or "5G", well, yes, but that needs another device, such as your phone to be required, then you have to connect yo...

well, that was acronym overload for you.. let me break it down: Airspy - https://airspy.com/ USB dongle to "listen to all the things" RPi = Raspberry Pi 4 - yes, they are back in stock & I just received a 4GB version.  Couldn't remember why I had it on back order, so I thought I would use it for this project anyway. RTL-SDR = Software Defined Radio - basically a USB stick that acts as a scanner of radio waves - but not just audio / digital too. https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/ So what can you do with this? Well, you can run software that allows you to see what Plane transponders are broadcasting ADS-B around the 100+mile radius of where you are (if your antenna is good enough) - basically flightaware.com You can see what Ships are broadcasting AIS messages, albeit usually within a 25m radius - basically marinetraffic.com Basically, devices transmit encoded messages and we can pick them up from the SDR and decode them and work out the details that they contain an...

I wrote another PAGE to extend the original earlier POST as I received my Raspberry Pi 4 and decided to set it up and compare it to the Rock Pi X and RPi 3+ device. Well....that was an interesting exercise! CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT IN MORE DEPTH Old creepy eyes here, does do the job with an RPI 4 device... but not as outstandingly well as I had expected.   To see the RPi4 performance, check out the PAGE HERE . Well, it seems to be working okay...... CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT IN MORE DEPTH