Last time on…
You might remember my post from a couple years ago about “cutting the cord”, but needing a source for watching Jeopardy!, which is a non-negotiable for our household. Since then, Jeopardy! has started being streamed on Hulu and Peacock, although the episodes are only available the day after they air, and they only keep a week’s worth of shows available. Being a completionist, this is, of course, unacceptable.
I left that previous post having purchased an antenna and HDHomeRun, which is a four-tuner receiver that takes over-the-air broadcast signals, decodes them, and makes them available on a network. I also use Plex, which provides a channel guide, live TV capability, and which can record those broadcasts like a completely digital DVR. Plex has apps for the Apple TV and other Apple devices, which is what we primarily use at home.
An incomplete installation leads to tears
After that, I failed to make a good, permanent antenna installation, and the whole thing was too flaky to count on. We live just below the top of a decent hill, but unfortunately on the wrong side of it, as far as reaching our local station goes. We recently had a shed/office built in our backyard, and it is positioned as far up that hill as is possible. As part of the shed project, I ran cat 6a cable to the shed, connected to our home network, so there was now connectivity up there. To top it off (no pun intended), a friend who knew of my antenna project donated an antenna mast that he no longer needed to the cause.
A mast on a hill, PoE, and joy
Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we installed the mast and antenna on the new structure. While there is power available in the shed, the network switches in question provide power-over-ethernet (PoE), which I wanted to use; it’s just one less thing exposed to the elements if I could eliminate the HDHomeRun’s power plug. Unfortunately, the HDHomeRun doesn’t accept PoE as a power source, so I found an appropriate PoE splitter on Amazon. The splitter takes ethernet in, splits the data and power, providing a data-only ethernet cable and a separate DC output. There was a minor issue of the barrel plug not being quite right, which a small adapter took care of.
And it finally works reliably! We now get a much more stable signal, have a clean installation with the fewest cables I could muster, and as much Jeopardy! (and other shows, of course!) as we can record, all stored on my network-attached storage. Now we can not only continue enjoying our cable-free situation, and are not beholden to whatever service does or does not carry our favorite dinner-time game show.
Now that I have that mast…
This has sparked a couple of other projects that can take advantage of that mast. First, a friend has started experimenting with MeshCore, a chat layer implemented on a mesh radio system. She gave me a receiver (I’m stmpjmpr on there, if you want to say hi), and I now have some parts coming to build a repeater that I’ll hang up on that mast. After that, I need to pick back up on a weather station in bought awhile back. It’s still in its box…that will need to change. More to come!