All, over the past few days I have noticed my stats have been cut in half. From avg. of 1MM plus positions reports, to well under half day after day. If you look at my feeder stats, you can see exactly what I mean. Nothing in position or equipment/software has changed. The same is true for numbers on my nearby sites numbers, where I lost over half of my reported positions and 200k-ish flights. Any tips or recommendations on where to start troubleshooting would be appreciated. Flightaware prostick plus blue USB, Rpi on 8.2, AirNav ads-b 1090 antenna.I moved my antenna 5/13 and it clearly shows my numbers doubled overnight and permorming steadily until recently. They are now falling back to where they were prior to the move. Antenna/rpi are both located inside, 2nd story window hence the lack of 360 coverage so no water/cable damages. Avg. 100 plus locations/positions but my message rate has been low, even when it was reporting 1 million plus positions a day.
Do you use the “SkyAware Anywhere” website at all? There is a known issue (phenomenon?) where viewing your coverage map on that site (vs using the local map on your network) artificially inflates message count. It has been that way since they launched that page, and the fact that they haven’t “fixed” it suggests that it’s (more or less) working as designed.
The fact that your aircraft count didn’t fall off at the same time suggests pretty strongly that this is the case.
@jafrank, I do use the SkyAware Anywhere when at the office/not on the home network. Numbers had been consistent and improving post antenna move, but now seem like they are worse than they were before. Seems the number of flights/positions reported tanked suddenly. Messages p/sec seem like they dropped to below 9p/s as well about the same time that the numbers started dropping.
What does sudo journalctl -eu piaware show?
As others have identified, use of flightaware anywhere causes the site(s) to produce extra reporting - thus artificially inflating the number of position reports.
From your flightaware stats page, take a look at nearby / nieghboring sites and note that none of them depict 1m+ position reports in the <30 may time period.
Once I get off this work call, let me Sudo in. I’ll also check my local in a few and report back. Standby
I’m not following. I guess I am not jsut seeing what you are seeing on the page that you linked:
On 5/30 you had 1,158,192 positions and 2,575 aircraft. Four days later, on 6/3, you had 595,077 positions and 2,395 aircraft. In that case, 563,000 fewer messages reported produced 180 fewer aircraft.
Or, looked at another way, messages reported dropped by 49%, but actual planes only dropped by 7%.
On 5/31, you had 25% fewer messages than the day before, but reported 437 more aircraft (+17%)
In the time since you moved your antenna on the 13th, you have reported a low of 2,185 aircraft (on 5/14) and a high of 3,153 on 5/18 - a difference of 31%. Over the same period, my (much worse) station has seen a high of 1,243 on 5/26 and a low of 967 on 5/21. A range of 32.3%
This looks to me exactly like the differences that I see when using/not using SkyAware Anywhere, and the day-to-day variation that I see due to weather and day of the week.
If you want to test the theory, just use the SkyAware Anywhere page for a week. Load it up in a browser tab and just let it be. After a week, close that tab and don’t use it at all for the next week. I guarantee that you will see that your positions reported is 60%+ more when using that page than when you don’t - but your aircraft reported will remain relatively stable.
The thing is, if you have a network problem with your connection to FlightAware, you would have the same effect – i.e. a big drop in messages but only a small drop in planes.
Personally I don’t use SkyAware Anywhere very often so can’t tell whether it has any affect on reported statistics.
Lots and lots of discussions about it, here is a link that jumps into the middle of one: 'Other' again - #8 by JRG1956
What kind of network connection are you using with your Rpi? Are you wifi or hard line ethernet connected? If you know how to admin in to your router, have a look at your connectivity. You or your provider may have some new issues a foot.
Wifi, need to upgrade to hardwired. its the cheap zero from the flightaware bundle
Went into the local page. Oddly, on the anywhere, it’s no longer showing my 30-day ranking either now.
|Total Aircraft: 95|
ADS-B Message Rate: 651.4/sec|
|With Positions: 88|
|Position History:|
I tried to SSH in, keep getting connection refused
Can you check on your router to see if you have the correct IP address of the Raspberry Pi?
Edit to add: You could also look at the piaware log by clicking on the gear icon on your stats page.
I bought the same Pi zero kit from FA and I got myself hardwired to ethernet by attaching a USB 4 port hub to the Pi USB port and then connecting a ethernet cable dongle to the hub. The little hub works well to expand your USB connectivity to the Pi with a very small footprint.
Did you add SSH to the root directory?
What would explain the sudden drop in numbers though?
In my case was water infiltration in the outside antenna connector…
Looks like it was an issue with the cables, replaced some and back to normal with almost 365 coverage out to 250nm+ now i just need to get my 978mhz antenna setup…
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