Dump1090 keeps failing and restarting

FlightAware General
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Hi everyone, hoping to get some advice on a potential hardware issue with my Raspberry Pi 4. - apologies if this sound rather noobie.

I have a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 that’s been running ADS-B in my attic for a while. A few days ago, I received overheating alerts and found out the fan vent got blocked after my partner had been up there.
Since the Pi was on an older image, I decided to update it to the latest version (Bookworm) and see if it still worked. I brought it down to my office, but unfortunately, it dump1090-fa kept failing and reconnecting every few minutes.

Here’s my setup:

Interestingly, I have a spare 8GB Pi 4, and so far, it’s been running the ADS-B software for over an hour without any disconnects. The 4GB Pi seems to be working fine for other uses besides ADS-B.

Are there any specific tests I can run to diagnose if the issue lies with the Raspberry Pi itself, the RTL-SDR dongle, or maybe the LNA filter as i find it strange it’s only dump1090-fa experiencing this problem?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.

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First thing would be to analyse the logs when dump1090-fa is failing.
4GB of ram for the Pi would be more then enough to get it running without issues.
Once we can have a look at the logs we might be able to tell more.

Other thought, does the 4GB Pi have power issues? Are you using a decent powersupply?

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The bad or gone-bad power supply is a very common cause of failures. Try an original raspberry pi 3A power supply.

If using a good power supply unit does not solve the problem, then next most common cause is software corruption. Best way to eliminate software corruption is to re-image the microSD card.

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Thanks @abcd567, I did reimage it and switched over to the official raspberry power supply.

I’ve currently got dongle plugged directly into the raspberry pi and was thinking of using a 30cm usb extension as feel the slightest knock to the dongle may also be contributing to the issue.