You are right, of course…and the best way to deal with the problem if the site is not easily accessible. I fully expect the fan to fail eventually. All I need to do is grab another one in the basement, walk into the garage, and replace it.
An important fun factor for me is tinkering, specially with unorthodox, cheap solutions.
It all depends where the Pi is sited. Heat is always to be taken into account. All conditions being the same, the RPi4 generates more heat.
Writing vanila Raspbian to micrSD card and enabling SSH is same effort as writing Piaware image. The only additional steps are packaage install of piaware & dump1090-fa
To make the package intall very easy, yesterday I wrote a bash script which makes package install on vanila Raspbian just a matter of copy-pating the following bash script into SSH console.
sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abcd567a/piaware/master/piaware-on-raspbian.sh)"
This script not only installs packages, but at the end asks for user to input feeder-id and sets this id in /etc/piaware.conf when Enter key is pressed. If no feeder-id is entered, the script advises user to go to claims page and exits with “installation completed” announcement.
I will shortly add to the bash script code which will ask user to input WiFi credentials (ssid, password, country code) and save it in file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf, enabling WiFi.
How about gain settings? This is almost like a birthday party with gifts!!
Gonna buy some extra memory cards to play.
My play Pi 3b+ arrives Wednesday.
The lower the setting that gets the job done the better. It usually gives the best SNR. Avoid the MAX/-10 at all cost.
I don’t know how many different hardware configurations I tried in the past couple of years, but the best results were always with gain settings between 29.7 and 49.6.
If you don’t like messing with settings on the console, you can use this script to automatically adjust gain:
Automatic gain optimization for dump1090 fa · wiedehopf/adsb-wiki Wiki · GitHub
It adjusts gain until Messages>-3dB are between 1% and 5%.
This usually equates to a good gain setting, it basically follows the guidelines of the 2nd post of this thread (Thoughts on optimizing gain).
Anyway for the manual method, i’ve written small helpers as well, they are included here:
Automatic installation for dump1090 fa · wiedehopf/adsb-wiki Wiki · GitHub
(@abcd567 feel free to include the helper for setting gain on the console without editing a file, if you wish you can include the location changer as well though this isn’t normally needed with piaware installed)
The NooElec stick arrived yesterday. If one needs bias-t on all the time, this is my new favorite, way more convenient than the RTL-SDR Blog v3 stick.
It’s also a great HF receiver, within its dynamic range limitations, when coupled with a SpyVerter upconverter.
It’d be really interesting to see how well it performs with the RTL-SDR-LNA compared to the RTL-SDR V3 dongle.
That always on bias-tee is a nice touch.
I won’t be changing the configuration of my stations anytime soon, as I’m trying to beat my old record for planes seen. Finally, after a long time, looks like it’ll happen. If it does happen, it’ll confirm what I have been saying about how critical the placement of an indoor antenna can be.
As for the NooElec and RTL-SDR Blog LNA working together, I don’t foresee any problems. If I recall, the NooElec has enough ‘juice’ to feed the LNA.
On my second station, which is outperforming my main station right now, I’m using a much maligned eBay LNA. It all depends how you ‘pair’ it, I guess. The eBay LNA is placed after a dark blue FA filter.
I have the v2 RTL-SDR dongle which had a bias-t enabled by a solder jumper. I like that as it means no software fiddling needed to get it to work.
I’ve also noticed this - changing position by a small amount can make a huge difference.
I have one of those as well, and my to-do list has the ‘install jumper’ task for the longest time.
Well, i am using a very basic indoor antenna located in my home office under the roof. I moved the antenna to the left of the window, in front of the window, to the right
I also changed the height of the antenna from bottom to the upper end of the window, closed to the ceiling.
After several tests i found out that it’s placed best on the left, approx 50cm below the ceiling.
Any other position is giving a slightly lower message rate.
What i did not do is long term monitoring per position, but i assume i’ve found the best position indoor, this is confirmed by the max range and the current range which are close to each other.
Any other improvement would require an outdoor antenna
I only have two small gaps to the north and to the south, but this needs also an outdoor antenna.
But what was the initial topic of this thread? 
Avoid the RPi4 for now.
3B+ with and without a POE unit with fan (CPU not doing a lot). I removed it to use it on an RPI4.
I ordered some heatsink liquid adhesive. It should arrive tomorrow.
I plan to use it on the RPI4s and maybe a 3B+ or two. I read a few articles that suggested adhesive was better than the tape.
Much better thermal conductivity by thinner heat transfer medium alone almost.
Apply almost too thin and clamp with reasonable force until cured would be my guess, but i’m sure you’ve read something from people who tried it.
Maybe there are some problem with thermal expansion which require the glue to be a certain thickness.
Also non-removable obviously.
My orange stick and Pi 3b+ arrived day before yesterday and are now working. I used the following to guide me and it worked wonderfully. Thank you abcd567!
Added FA software (using script), updated OS, added SSH and VNC from the GUI, configured the WIFI, and chopped it’s head off, and stuck it in a South facing window.
Messed up one time by adding my site ID when I really wanted two sites. One of them to play with.and one for “production”…
Now I am going to use your script to do the gain. We will see what happens.
Thanks to all.
One other small item was I tried to partition the SD card before I realized I just needed to write the image as balenaEtcher did that for me. After booting the OS corrected something with the boot sectors/partition of the card and away we went.
One last edit about heat. I used the FLIRC metal case. It comes with a sticky thermal pad to connect the top of the CPU to the case. I used a test that calculates prime numbers up to 125000 on all cores. Never got above 60C.
In above guide, I have now added detailed method for enabling WiFi in Raspbian image right from first boot. This is done immediately after writing Raspbian image, and while the microSD card is still in the card reader of Desktop/Laptop.
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Yes I noted the instruction about SSH file but was unable to get past the security warning about password for SSH when booting. (keyboard and mouse would notwork probably because drivers were not loaded) But I was able to boot to the GUI and add SSH, VNC, and Network with a working keyboard and mouse. (I assume a complete boot enabled the previously non-working hardware.)
But all in all a very complete document
With that file set the ssh server should be working despite the warning.
Did you try to connect via ssh?
SSH is disabled in default, at least I assume so and that was why the instruction to add the SSH blank file.
I’m aware. So you added the file and it was still not enabling the SSH server?
It should enable the server despite the default password.
Then you login via ssh and change the password.
