I wanted a low cost, open source geographic information system (GIS) that would would support ham radio operations and could be added to a mobile ham shack. I also wanted the GIS to work without internet access and be able to be updated using digital modes available to ham radio operators.
ESRI ArcGIS for Server, ESRI Portal for ArcGIS, ESRI ArcGIS Desktop, and Microsoft SQL Server are widely used in the GIS community. While these are great products, they did not meet my requirements.
Software:
- Geoserver is the open source equivalent of ArcGIS Server, software that can provide geospatial information to applications
- PostgreSQL is the database for storing both geospatial and non-geospatial information.
- PostGIS is an extension for Postgresql that adds geospatial capability
- GeoNode is an open source equivalent of Portal for ArcGIS, software that allows users to create and share web maps and documents
- QGIS is desktop application for producing high quality maps and performing geospatial analyses
- GNU Radio is the toolkit for developing software defined radios
- RTL-SDR software used to demodulate radio signals
- Python - script language for processing text and performing database operations
Hardware:
- Raspberry Pi 2 (900 Mhz, 512 MB Ram, 10/100 Ethernet)
- Raspberry Pi 3 (1.2 GHz, 1 GB Ram, 10/100 Ethernet)
- ODroid C2 (1.5 GHz, 2GB Ram, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 4K display support)
- RTL-SDR RTL2832U - a cheap radio receiver
- HackRF One - a software defined radio receiver/transmitter
GIS Data:
In future posts, I'll be detailing the build and configuration process, expanding on GIS data sources, and discussing potential applications.
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