hi – blue flightaware dongle. Plus a pre-amp, noise filter, outside antenna.
Setup working for about a year. nothing has changed except that today flightaware isn’t receiving any data.
I’m 99.9% sure the dongle is working -
Found 1 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2832U, SN: 00001000
Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U
Detached kernel driver
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Supported gain values (29): 0.0 0.9 1.4 2.7 3.7 7.7 8.7 12.5 14.4 15.7 16.6 19.7 20.7 22.9 25.4 28.0 29.7 32.8 33.8 36.4 37.2 38.6 40.2 42.1 43.4 43.9 44.5 48.0 49.6
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Sampling at 2048000 S/s.
No E4000 tuner found, aborting.
Reattached kernel driver
plus flightaware says that it’s connected to a 1090 mode S receiver but but not seeing any data.
I guess I gotta remove parts from my setup until I find the broken part?
Is there a way to do this more elegantly with a multimeter? If so, can someone break it down for me and my pea brain?
I checked all the connectors and they’re tight…
Edit – maybe it’s the blue dongle. I put it back in the computer and it flashed green for a second, in that it’s connected, and then it went to orange again (connected but no data received). I took out the bias tee and the noise filter. I guess the next step is to take down the antenna and check the connections and then just simplify everything — blue dongle directly to antenna inside…
I have another setup – can I just swap the blue dongles to see if it’s that, or does flightaware need to know the specific ID for the dongle. I think it’s the former (i can just swap them)
Flightaware only needs a specific ID per dongle if you are running multiple dongles (e.g. you’re running 1090MHz ADS-B and 978MHz UAT). If you’ve never serialized your dongles, then swapping them should have no effect.
I’m thinking there’s an intermitted connection issue in there – maybe broken solder point or something. I think the way I had it set up caused it – pressure at the USB-A since the cable sorta pushed on it, and it just broke over time.
that’s why I was getting the intermittent findings – sometimes it was working perfectly well (typically for a few seconds) and then other times it was showing that it was plugged in but no data, and other times flightaware couldn’t find it at all.
this is much easier than going through every other piece (bias t, filter, pre-amp, antenna) to track down a problem.
We had a similar discussion a few weeks back about the dongles physical connection to the Rpi USB port doesn’t perform well when exposed to physical stresses related to cable tension or dongle weight etc. Myself and others find that placing a short quality USB extension cable between the Rpi and dongle provides the re-leaf for most all of the physical stresses that cause the connectivity issues. It also provides heat transfer isolation between the Rpi and the dongle.
I concur with the short USB cable isolation. In my case, the cable moved the dongle away from the RPi and I improved my reception substantially. Evidently, the RPi or the dongle create Radio Frequency Interference, RFI, and mess up the operation of the other. My guess, the RPi clock and WiFi signals affected the ADSB reception in the unshielded blue FlightAware dongle.
Improving performance and reliability is often a matter of minimizing unknown problems. Often never sure just what fixes some problems, just happy to have a better working system.
I learned the hard way! just bought one. (Edit: well, a dongle. And a USB extender cable). I did take apart the blue dongle and nothing is obviously broken from what I can visually see but since I have a 2nd setup I swapped the dongles and the problem follows the dongle. So it’s the dongle )
I jiggled the receiver today and got data for about 2 seconds. My tar1090 lit up with a sky full of planes and I even got a happy email from flightaware that it was receiving data again. .
.