Gotta kick my pi 3 in the pants every few hours

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

I am running a 2.5 amp power supply with a pi 3 16 gig microsd card and a fa pro sick with a fa filter and a fa antenna

it all boots up and works good
then i get nothing after a while
so I manually reboot it from the fa website and all goes well foe a couple of hours
i have high speed internet and I am using the built in wifi on the pi 3

i am running 2.15 jessie latest one

[2016-04-23 23:41 PDT] mlat(1003): Reconnecting in 30.0 seconds
[2016-04-23 23:41 PDT] mlat(1003): Beast-format results connection with localhost:30104: [Errno 111] Connection refused
[2016-04-23 23:41 PDT] no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30005 for 180 seconds, next check in 60s
[2016-04-23 23:41 PDT] mlat(1003): Connection to localhost:30005 lost: [Errno 111] Connection refused
[2016-04-23 23:41 PDT] mlat(1003): Reconnecting in 30.0 seconds
[2016-04-23 23:41 PDT] mlat(1003): Beast-format results connection with localhost:30104: [Errno 111] Connection refused
[2016-04-23 23:42 PDT] 13181 msgs recv’d from dump1090 (31 in last 5m); 13165 msgs sent to FlightAware
[2016-04-23 23:42 PDT] mlat(1003): Connection to localhost:30005 lost: [Errno 111] Connection refused
[2016-04-23 23:42 PDT] mlat(1003): Reconnecting in 30.0 seconds
[2016-04-23 23:42 PDT] mlat(1003): Beast-format results connection with localhost:30104: [Errno 111] Connection refused

tech supp0rt is busy

I just want to get back to normal rock solid operations

thanks
!!!

2

If you are able to reboot the pi via command from the FA website, that tells me the network side of things is working.

The simplest thing I can think of next would be to move the dongle to a different USB port and reboot the pi. See if that helps.

3

tried that
tried going direct stick to pi using the usb ports
and using a 3 foot high quality usb extender cable to get the stick away from my monitors and stuff
still happens.
even tried a rtl.sdr stick with tcxo and still happens.

4

Have you tried using a different power supply yet? Many RPi issues are caused by bad, poor quality, or dying power supplies.

I had a issue where my RPi 2 model B would boot normally but not feed FA due to a dying power supply. The power supply was less then 30 days old. Since that issue I got a good quality RPi power supply and also added a powered USB hub for my dongle. I’ve had no issues for over a year now.

FYI, my dongle is mounted on my antenna mast just below the antenna and is connected to my RPi in my house using a 32 foot USB extension cable.

5

Suggestion 1

use wifi check script (link and instructions below)

https://rpi.tnet.com/project/scripts/wifi_check

Suggestion 2.

you could also ping your router with a job in cron to run every minute to keep connection alive


crontab -e

add the line


* * * * * /ping ­c2 192.168.1.254 > /dev/nul

Ctrl x and y to save

the code above works if your router has the ip of 192.168.1.254,if its different, substitute the address for yours.

6

Yep - second that - power supply issues will be big with the Pi 3 :open_mouth: Use a good 2.4 Amp supply at least.

7

A majority of Raspberry Pi issues are related to power supplies and USB cables running from the power supply to the Pi.

Use a good, calibrated digital voltmeter and measure the voltage at the Raspberry Pi, such as GPIO pins 2 (+5) and 6 (ground) while the Pi and anything hooked up to it is running.

You should read at least 4.8 Volts. If you read below 4.8 Volts, you have a not-so-good power supply, or USB cables that introduce too much voltage drop.

bob k6rtm

8

I am using a new canakit 2.5 amp supply ( have 2 new ones )

I am always able to reboot the unit from the website and it works for 12 hours or so then blammo down it goes
then I reboot from the website and I am good for another 12 hours or so
It does not have any problems where there is a ton of air traffic only when there is none to very minimal traffic ( 4 to 6 am usually )

also the window where it shows the aircraft being heard on the right side sometimes fills up with data slowly ( false data ) for 5 or 10 seconds then it slowly boils down to what is actually out there.

I think that this might be a software issue ( i don’t know )

i also have connected the pro stick directly to the pi 3 with no usb cable and still have the same problems.

funny thing is you try to stay current and have something better where the older pi 2 unit with the older pi aware version was rock solid !!!

I also changed the mlat over to 30104 seems to have helped

no I just get what is happening above

thanks for your guidance guys !!!

9

Symptoms of 2 things I think,

  1. Wifi system of the pi is going into power save/sleep mode.

You can put this right by opening


sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

add this line below the settings for wlan0


wireless-power off

then restart networking to the pi


sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

then check power saving is set to off on wlan0 by viewing the output of


iwconfig
  1. Low traffic causing a break in wifi comms from pi-router / router-pi

Follow steps in my previous post further up this thread to keep wifi connection active during low station demand.

10

Re: rebooting PI
I have changed Power supply, HUB, PI, SD, SDR and my PI is still rebooting.
Its rebooting because it was hanging which required me to do something, so
I added the internal watchdog. So instead of a hang I get a clean reboot.
The watchdog is doing a ping of its router every 3 seconds so if network
is broken I loose 4 pings an it reboots.
I’m not using wlan0, and I have 2 ethernets (1 internal, and 1 via USB)
The network gets wedged If I have internal, or external, or both running.

It reboots about once or twice a week unless I turn MLAT on. Then it
reboots a few times per day :frowning:

11

Check /var/log/syslog for the reason why it reboots

for me, its the USB Dongle broken, so it keeps rebooting until I RMA

12

Looking at the syslog I see that the PI did not
get any reply from pings. TCPDUMP on
another host shows no PING REQUEST.

Whats on the USB bus…

  1. the SDR dongle
  2. a USB->ethernet (second ethernet dongle)

I can remove the second ethernet (so i’m left
with just the onboard ethernet) and still get
the same problem (ie hang without watchdog,
and reboot if watchdog start).

PS I have run TCPDUMP (apt-get install tcpdump)
and when the problem occurs I no longer see
any ICMP ECHO REQUEST packets leaving the
PI.

PPS once the PI is hung (no watchdog) all I
see of a new incoming ssh is the first SEQ
packet. I don’t see the SEQ/ACK packet
sent from PI.