Using Raspberry Pi to receive and decode wefax

[scottlirwinParticipant]

Please excuse me if I’m asking a question that has already been answered. I have looked around and found related items but nothing exactly like what I am trying to accomplish.
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​I use my rsp1a to receive weather fax documents while camping in Baja California, Mexico. I currently use a Lenovo Windows machine running Sdruno and SeaTTY (pc based wefax decoding software). It works great except for two problems. First of all, the windows machine is power hungry and I am running everything off of a 12 volt deep cycle battery and small solar panel which can’t handle the load too long. I’m camping for a couple of weeks at a time far from civilization so plugging into the wall isn’t an option The second problem has to do with my inverter which adds a lot of RF interference into the signal. the interference is so bad, most of the time the received images are unusable. I’d rather bypass the interter all together and plug straight into an existing 2 amp USB charging port wired to my camper electrical system.
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​I am looking into purchasing a raspberry pi for receiving weather fax documents. I like to tinker but have no experience with raspberry pi. My “google research tells me”:
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​- I should download and use the SDRplay_RPi_V0.6.img.xz image from the sdruno website. The software on this image will control my rsp1a radio.
​- I can install fldigi for use with decoding the weather fax image and saving it to the sd card
​- I can use port audio to move the received signal to fldigi
​- I can save precious battery power by not running a mouse, keyboard, monitor, etc…..
​- I can use some sort of terminal software so I can connect to the pi using an android table through bluetooth to control the radio and view my weather fax images. I’m not sure what software will allow me to do this.
​- I heard the pi can get hot so I should purchase a metal case with fan and heat sinks.
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​QUESTIONS:
​- Am I heading in the right direction with my thinking?
​- Should I purchase a Raspberry Pi 4 or 3B? If a 4, should I purchase 1, 2, or 4 gigs of ram? Please remember I don’t plan to use the pi for anything other than what is listed above and saving power is very important to me.
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​Thanks for any help you can provide.

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