As soon as a Canakit 4B 4Gig kit is available on Amazon (est. August) I’ll buy one. My 3B+ is exhausted running 2 dongles and feeding 2 Windows network printers. Once that is done I’ll try to feed Fr24, Opensky, FA, PF and RB. Currently I’m only feeding FR24 and FA.
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So you are printing all the ADS-B messages? 
No, I’m printing stuff from my Windows network such as DB reports, email, spreadsheets, etc. About 500 pages per day are printed on the network (10 workstations) each week. Most are from automated home functions such as kitchen recipes, inventory, etc.
My both Pis run 2 dongles each.
Orange Pi PC: stn 6236
Dongle 00001090 - dump1090-fa
Dongle 00000978 - dump978-fa
R Pi Model 2: stn 5252 & 76000
Dongle 00000101 - dump1090-mutability/piaware
Dongle 00000102 - dump1090-mutability2/piaware2
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Ok i clearly need to mark my jokes with more smilies 
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Yummy!
…
Moving the ethernet off USB and onto its own PCI interface certainly helps.
As would the more speed from the USB 3.0 interface.
I know the sd card is about twice as fast. Not sure if they moved it to a dedicated interface or if the better USB just makes everything better,
Faster memory can’t hurt either.
Yup, my wife has automated the entire kitchen function from weekly meal planning, inventory and meal preparation. She uses an app called Paprika. Even with all of that we manage to visit our greengrocer every other day to get fresh ingredients.
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Using a Pi 4 might make it feasible to do more resource intensive stuff, like running something like FlightAirMap, or run another dongle to decode VDL2 messages and automatically update the dump1090 aircraft list.
vlm2dec can monitor several frequencies at once which uses several threads.
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Recently bought a two pack of Anker USB-C to micro usb adapters, under $10 for the pack.
Geffers
A Pi4 for PiAware bit like using a Ferrari to take rubbish to the dump.
I’m not sure if current usage increases if aircraft count goes up but I have two Zeros permanently collecting data, just indoor set up my window and zeros use under 500mA
Aircraft count on each between 1500 to 2000 daily.
Heard also the Pi4 gets ‘hot’ and will probably need cooling.
Geffers
It really depends what it is you are trying to do - a pi zero will handle an instance of dump1090 and probably feed one or two sites with no problem. If you start adding things to that - feeding multiple sites, serving web pages for stats and running services to do more with the data then they quickly run out of capacity.
On the subject of powering/cooling a pi 4, I have have just ordered one of these which avoids any USB-C problems: DockerPi PowerBoard
It can provide up to 4A at 5V, which should be plenty to supply a Pi, dongle and feed a bias-T without voltage drops, and has a fan built in that will provide some cooling. It takes a 12V input that I will feed with an old linear power supply that I used to use to power radio stuff, but is currently sitting on a shelf doing nothing. It provides a good stable output, so should work quite nicely.
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Hi re pi4 / airspy
could you confirm is there much difference after a while running airspy on -12 or -20 as pic sugests its the same amounts of aircraft / messages
is there any benifit me changing from -12 to -20
many thanks
john
-12 and -20 normally makes very little difference.
Haven’t heard from anyone where it made a substantial difference.
I’m sure keithma who might have a similar range will soon change to the pi4 and report if changing to 20 MHz made a difference 
Yes, it works, but still loosing quite a few samples, but maybe that is something else…
Found 1 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001
Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
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 2400000 S/s.
Info: This tool will continuously read from the device, and report if
samples get lost. If you observe no further output, everything is fine.
Reading samples in async mode…
Allocating 15 zero-copy buffers
lost at least 1088 bytes
lost at least 1036 bytes
lost at least 520 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 392 bytes
lost at least 388 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 27164 bytes
lost at least 7408 bytes
lost at least 388 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 388 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 15852 bytes
lost at least 2992 bytes
lost at least 388 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 13256 bytes
lost at least 2212 bytes
lost at least 388 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
lost at least 260 bytes
lost at least 132 bytes
Signal caught, exiting!
User cancel, exiting…
Samples per million lost (minimum): 13
Reattached kernel driver
Seems that it’s mostly fixed but not all of the way.
The real test is MLAT.
dump1090-fa uses the dongle a bit different compared to rtl_test.
For a proper test you actually need to use 2.4 MHz:
rtl_test -s 2400000
Did you upgrade the firmware of the USB controller to vl805_fw_0137a8…
You need the old version vl805_fw_013701…to work correctly
I downgraded to the older version a while ago, but I’ll check again.
Edit: yes it is the older version
Well, it is working, it is just that the dongle loses samples, and that is not a good sign. I tested this with two different dongles, RTL-SDR and RadarBox.
I have today bought a Pi4 and psu, awaiting a working OS for piaware to test
013701 firmware + patched kernel works fine for me. No lost samples even with it set to 2.4MHz. A previous test I ran rtl_test for several hours and no problems.
# time rtl_test -s 2400000
Found 1 device(s):
0: FlightAware, Pro Stick, SN: 00001000
Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U
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 2400000 S/s.
Info: This tool will continuously read from the device, and report if
samples get lost. If you observe no further output, everything is fine.
Reading samples in async mode...
^CSignal caught, exiting!
User cancel, exiting...
Samples per million lost (minimum): 0
real 4m5.578s
user 0m3.902s
sys 0m2.119s