so ive been messing around with the idea of setting up a proper remote station for a while now, mostly because my HOA situation is getting worse and i have a buddy with some land about 40 miles out who said i could put up antennas there. the question is whether to go with RemoteHams RRC-1258 boxes or just cobble something together with a raspberry pi and some VoIP setup i already kind of understand.

also been looking at the SDR remote side of things through RemoteHams because i already run an SDRplay at home and honestly the idea of having that sitting out at a rural site with no local RF noise is pretty appealing. anyone actually used the RemoteHams SDR remote client for anything serious like actual contesting or just casual DX listening? i cant find many real-world opinions that arent from like 2016.

the internet linking piece is what im less sure about. my buddy only has a basic cable connection out there, nothing fancy, and im wondering if thats going to be a bottleneck for control latency on SSB. CW would probably be fine but SSB audio with any kind of jitter gets annoying fast. anyone run a remote over a mediocre residential connection with decent results or is this a lost cause without fiber or a dedicated link

ran a RemoteHams setup for about two years before i moved and actually got to put up a real tower. the RRC boxes are solid, not gonna lie, setup is kind of fiddly the first time but once its dialed in it just works. the latency thing on SSB is real though — anything above like 80ms round trip starts to feel weird for phone operating, you kind of develop a habit of pausing more than you normally would. CW through the keyer emulation is actually really good, i was surprised.

the SDR side i only played with briefly, used it for monitoring while the main radio was tied up, worked fine for that. dont know how it holds up for serious use. for a cable connection at 40 miles out youre probably fine as long as your buddy isnt streaming 4K at the same time you're trying to work a pileup, hah. QoS settings on his router would help if he'll let you mess with it.

honestly the raspberry pi route is more work upfront but you understand every piece of it which matters a lot when something breaks at 2am and you cant physically get to the site. i went down that road with hamlib and a cheap audio interface and it works but ive spent way more hours debugging it than i ever would have with a dedicated solution. depends how much you enjoy that kind of thing i guess. the RemoteHams ecosystem at least has actual support forums and the protocol is pretty well documented at this point.