My pi keeps going offline with a solid red light.
A reboot fixes it, sometimes for an hr, overnight or a few days.
Is there (fault logs) I can review to see what’s causing this?
Usually it is an insufficient power supply or overload of USB devices. What model is it and what do you currently have plugged in? You can try a more beefy power supply to see if that fixes it.
Most common problem - a dying PSU.
Try a replacement and see if it improves.
Already replaced PSU. No joy. I think it’s the config or SDR. Because if the SDR is removed it runs forever.
Hence why I am interested in looking at the log files for errors
No cooling?
Have you checked the cpu temperature?
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I have a Pi that I use to feed LiveATC with about 5 SDRs. The issue I was having is that I was using a USB 3.0 hub and USB 3.0 cables. The Pi would kill the SDRs randomly. I wonder if the dongle doesn’t like the USB 3.0 port it is plugged into currently. Have you tried the 2.0 ports?
It looks like that power supply you are using is 3 amps. I’d recommend going up to a 5 amp supply like the official one. I have been doing some reading and the 3 amp supply you have may be causing power issues to the dongle.
When it comes to PS for RPis, my suggestion is to use a 10A+ PS with a barrel to USB-C pigtail.
The claimed current capacity is wishiful thinking for the most part. So, the 10A is 5A in reality.
The above applies to RPis 3, 4 and 5. For lower models, a discarded cell phone charger will do.
Connect everything using the power supply you have, open the SDR software, and use a multimeter to measure the voltage reaching the positive and negative pins of the SDR’s USB connector. Also, measure the voltage at the back of the RPi—at the power input and behind the USB ports—to check for voltage drops across these points.
Type vcgencmd get_throttled in the RPi SSH terminal: if it returns throttled=0x0, it means the voltage is OK.
Do this with the power supply you suspect is faulty and with another one that is working fine.7
Your pics suggest you are using a Radarbox SDR? These are known for weak solder joints on the USB connector that cause random dropouts.
I find the easiest is to use a USB volt meter plugged into a spare USB socket. Don’t use it in pass-though as that can introduce new problems.
Of the types below, chose one with a fly-lead as these don’t conflict for space with the SDR
Putting my SDRs onto a cheap ($20) powered USB-3 hub made my system much more reliable.