So, if I am running a Pi 3B+ with the Stretch PiAware image, and have successfully updated to 3.8.0 - is there any benefit to reimaging with the new Buster image?
I kind of have everything configured the way I want it, so it would be a medium-annoying amount of work to redo everything… Just wondering if it would be worth the effort.
Current config is the 3B+ > FlightAware Pro Stick > FlightAware 1090 Filter > about 2’ of coax > FlightAware 1090 antenna (hanging from a string inside a north-facing window)
Or, should I just buy a Pi4 and new dongle, filter, antenna and set up a second station?
Eventually, I plan to move the antenna to the roof, but the challenge is that the best position would be at the peak of the roof on the west end of the house, while the only place I could put the Pi (without drilling a hole in the house somewhere) would be in the garage, on the ground floor on the east end. That would mean a run of 80-100 feet of coax. Point being, if I am going to do that, I am going to need a bias-tee powered LNA at the antenna, which means a different dongle…so…
Also, if I use cable like this: Amazon.com, How would I attach an LNA at the antenna? I would hate to use a couple of pigtail adapters. Would it be worthwhile in that case to put the amplifier at the dongle end?
I have thought about that, but honestly I doubt I will do it. In my use case, it is the greater of the many potential evils.
In the “con” column:
I don’t currently have PoE capability, So I would need to come up with a PoE capable switch or router. (or, a PoE injector, I guess)
Most of my house is WiFi - the nearest ethernet connection (including routing the wire inside the house) would be 40 or 50 feet farther than the potential coax run.
I’m not thrilled with the concept of going up on my roof in the first place (I have an almost debilitating fear of heights), so the idea of having to go up & down a ladder to 30 feet above ground level for maintenance issues doesn’t appeal to me.
I travel most weeks for my job and am only home on the weekend. When my SD card failed a couple of months ago I was able to call my wife and have her swap it out with another as I was trying to troubleshoot from afar. No way she’s going up a ladder to do that.
So, for me, I need a system that is mostly accessible from within the house. I appreciate the suggestion though!
In the short to medium term, no need to upgrade - stretch will still get security updates and so on for some time yet, I expect. If you don’t need any of the updates in Buster, and you don’t need the newer kernels (e.g. for Pi 4 support) then stretch will be fine.
That way you don’t need to tweak the software to enable the bias-t or use an extra bias-t.
I’m personally not a fan of the uputronics amp and the performance in most cases is a bit worse, but it’s not too bad either.
While not ideal performance wise, it’s nice to be able to ‘service’ the receiving station anytime of day or night, with no regard for weather conditions, etc.
I’m not doing to badly with my indoor station. It’s either this or nothing.
Hi. My raspberry p3b refuses to work with versions 3.7.x and 3.8.
Stable only works 3.6.3. With other versions, a message appears just about every minute
“Problem fetching data from dump1090. AJAX call failed (timeout: timeout).
Maybe dump1090 is no longer running? The displayed map data will be out date”
Some time later my Raspberry rebooted. After a few reloads it no longer works.
Only after rewriting the sd card does it work again.
Does this mean that the last running stable version of the Raspberry Pi 3B remains only 3.6.3?
I own a raft of Pis. Two Pi4, two Pi3, a Pi2, a Pi1b, and two Pizero-W for a total of 8 devices. I’ve found out the hard way that SDCard reliability is a definite cause of odd behaviours on the Pis. I’ve had two of my Pis run for years without issue, and I have had others that were crashing randomly until I used a different SD card. I have also had two of my ADSB listener PIs have SD cards that died in the past two weeks and those were behaving weirdly for the past while…
@Tiboh In your instance, I would strongly recommed you use a new SDcard for that Pi, as I would suspect that the card is misbehaving somehow. Taking a complete disk image is a recommended step as well, though if the card is misbehaving that might cause the card to stop responding as well.
“if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
