Dump978-fa failure.... dump1090-fa just fine

[defunctwarrior]

I’ll try to keep this short, but I’ve been doing a ton of reading both here and on other forums trying to figure out my issue and have all but given up.

I’ve got a RPI 3 running PiAware 6.1. It has been running just fine for quite a while with just the 1090 ADS-B. I figured I’d venture out a little further and bought another antenna, filter, and dongle (I have one orange and one blue).

What have I done? The following:

1. Edited piaware-config.txt to add two lines: uat-receiver-type sdr and uat-sdr-gain max
2. Changed the serial numbers of the dongles (Orange to 00000978 and blue to 00001090)
3. Ensured 00001090 was in position ‘0’ and 00000978 in position ‘1’

Rebooted. ADS-B works, gets the feed pushed out. UAT not so much. A deeper dive into why as I scour. The general screen on the PiAware shows:

PiAware feeder: normal: PiAware 6.1 is running
1090 Receiver: normal: Received Mode S data recently
FlightAware feed: normal: Connected to FlightAware and logged in
Multilateration: normal: Multilateration synchronized
978 UAT Receiver: error: Not connected to UAT receiver

For a more in-depth look I have been watching the status feed and I see this:

When I check to see if both dongles are ‘seen’ by the Pi, indeed they are. The serial numbers are correct and in the correct order (Used rtl_test)

I’m stumped. Why is the UAT side up one minute and stopping the next?

[defunctwarrior]

Looking at the logs from the stats/config page:

[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] Started faup978 (pid 7052) to connect to dump978-fa
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] Starting faup978: /usr/lib/piaware/helpers/faup978 --connect localhost:30978
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] faup978(7052): Connected to [::1]:30978
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] lost connection to dump978-fa via faup978
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] faup978(7052): Connection failed: End of file
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 30 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] 6783 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa (513 in last 5m); 6783 msgs sent to FlightAware
[2021-11-07 17:46 CST] 17 msgs recv’d from dump978-fa (1 in last 5m); 16 msgs sent to FlightAware
[2021-11-07 17:47 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 90 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:48 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 151 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:49 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 211 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] mlat-client(556): Aircraft: 13 of 14 Mode S, 17 of 26 ADS-B used
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] mlat-client(556): Server status: synchronized with 131 nearby receivers
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] mlat-client(556): Receiver status: connected
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] mlat-client(556): Results: 5.8 positions/minute
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] Started faup978 (pid 7458) to connect to dump978-fa
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] ADS-B data program ‘dump978-fa’ is listening on port 30978, so far so good
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] faup978(7458): Connected to [::1]:30978
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] will reconnect to dump978-fa in 30 seconds
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] faup978 exited normally
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] lost connection to dump978-fa via faup978
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] faup978(7458): Connection failed: End of file
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] 7355 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa (572 in last 5m); 7355 msgs sent to FlightAware
[2021-11-07 17:51 CST] 18 msgs recv’d from dump978-fa (1 in last 5m); 17 msgs sent to FlightAware
[2021-11-07 17:52 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 30 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:53 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 90 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:54 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 150 seconds, next check in 60s
[2021-11-07 17:55 CST] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30978 for 210 seconds, next check in 60s

[obj]

You need to tell dump1090 & dump978 which serial numbers to use; otherwise they will both try to use index 0 and whichever gets there second, fails.

piaware-config rtlsdr-device-index 00001090
piaware-config uat-sdr-device driver=rtlsdr,serial=00000978

[defunctwarrior]

Does this go in the config file?

/boot/piaware-config.txt

Thanks

[obj]

You can set those options directly in the config file, or from a shell via piaware-config (which just ends up editing the config file)

[abcd567]

Immediately after writing the Piaware SD card image, and while the microSD Card was still plugged into Desktop, I clicked the drive letter of microSD card. This opened the /boot folder of microSD card. In this folder, opened file piaware-config.txt, and did following two things:

(1) Entered my wireless-ssid and wireless-password

(2) Scrolled down to the bottom of file, and added the required config parameters as shown in the screenshot below (last 4 lines below the line "# Additional settings can be added below.").

After making above changes, saved the text file piaware-config.txt, ejected microSD card from Desktop, slipped into RPi and powered up.

It worked as desired, right from first boot, without need for any further configuration.

[defunctwarrior]

That did it! Thank you @abcd567 and @obj. I don’t know why I didn’t see that anywhere in all my reading!

Back up and running now.

[abcd567]

@defunctwarrior

I don’t know why I didn’t see that anywhere in all my reading!

It is at least in these two places:

(1) Advanced Configuration documentation

(2) In this QuickStart Guide:

@abcd567

6 - Configure UAT 978

sudo piaware-config uat-receiver-type sdr
sudo piaware-config rtlsdr-device-index 00001090
sudo piaware-config uat-sdr-device driver=rtlsdr,serial=00000978

# Reboot Pi to implement configuration settings
sudo reboot