Piaware keeps dropping out

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Hi Guys,

Pi aware, frustratingly, keeps dropping out. I travel a lot and am not always able to check my e-mails to determine connectivity and because I am away from home, have to get my wife to crawl in the roof spaces to unplug and re-plug power to the Pi to get the thing started again. You can imagine she isn’t going to keep doing this!!

I have posted a Flightaware stats page and a Flightradar24 page. You will note the FR24 set drops out frequently too but it doesn’t need to be reset. It just keeps going. You will also note that FR24 has been fine in the last day or two while flightaware has stopped

My config is two separate aerials feeding the FR24 rx and Piaware dongle rx respectively. These are then Cat 5 to two jacks on a wireless AP then wireless to the router downstairs. I have tried remotely commanding the piaware to restart but it is not even showing on the router. It just seems to die.

Anybody know what might be causing this?

Terry

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2

I have experienced this recently as well. I believe my issues were caused by the perfect storm of:
New FA antenna
New HABamp lna/filter
MLAT
Florida summer heat.

The increased activity caused various connection issues. The PI would report to FA but not ping. FR24 had gaps, etc. I had the convenience of my GFIC outlet where the PI was getting power being downstream from the actual GFIC outlet in a bathroom. Recycling was as easy as tripping this outlet.

I would not imagine that attic heat is your issue during your winter but you would know that better than I. Are you powering the dongles from the PI USB ports. If so, you could definitely be seeing power issues. A powered USB HUB may be the answer.

FWIW, I feed FA and FR24 from the same radio as do many others I believe.

My issue turned out not to be supply voltage but overloading the CPU with data. I overclocked the PI B+ to the second level and have not had a problem since.

Good luck.

I am confused by your statement that the CAT5 feeds two jacks on the wireless AP. Is there one PI or two in this configuration?

3

Are you running all this on on Pi? If you are using two dongles plugged directly in the Pi you are most likely having power issues. You really should have them plugged into a powered USB hub. Now all that said, you can feed all that from one antenna and one dongle plugged into the Pi, you don’t need two antennas and are not getting any benefit by doing so.

4

On mine it was due to the dongle overheating - killed the whole Pi.

Your’s seems to be reliable (mostly) when it’s not going to be baking in the attic.

Solution - different dongle running nude (took the cover off). Took the case off the pi while I was there amd fitted a 12v fan running on 5v as an air stirrer - pi is at least 30C cooler than it was.

5

You might try replacing your Raspberry Pi’s power supply. Many issues are caused by bad power supplies.

About a month ago my RPi setup started acting up. Dump1090 status reported as [FAILED] but PiAware and everything else was reporting as [OK]. Rebooting didn’t fix the issue. I replaced the power supply and that solved it.

6

Hi Guys, thanks for all the responses. Sorry for my tardy response but, I have been out of town and unable to access the forum.

tdrane said:

*I would not imagine that attic heat is your issue during your winter but you would know that better than I.

A powered USB HUB may be the answer.

FWIW, I feed FA and FR24 from the same radio as do many others I believe.

My issue turned out not to be supply voltage but overloading the CPU with data. I overclocked the PI B+ to the second level and have not had a problem since.

I am confused by your statement that the CAT5 feeds two jacks on the wireless AP. Is there one PI or two in this configuration?*

It’s not heat. Its pretty cool up there all day.

The dongle is powered from the Pi USB port so maybe a powered hub might be worth a try.

Yeah. Haven’t quite figured out how to experiment with a collinear coax aerial and use the FR24 supplied aerial at the same time so I guess I am just running the FR24 as a set and forget while I play around with the collinear on the Pi. (Note: I haven’t actually touched the aerials in the last couple of months so that’s not what the problem could be).

Interested tdrane in how much data you were overloading the CPU with. More or less than me?

OK the setup may have been a little confusing but they are effectively both separate.

FR24

Supplied aerial and GPS >>>>>FR24 Reciever >>>>>>cat 5 network cable >>>>RW400 wireless AP (1 of 2 RJ45 jacks)>>>>wireless to router.

Pi

Homemade Colliners aerial >>>>>DVB-T Dongle >>>USB port on Pi>>>>>cat 5 network cable >>>>RW400 wireless AP (2 of 2 RJ45 jacks) >>>>wireless to router.

They are separate systems until they join at the wireless AP.

Thanks to you other guys who came up with similar suggestions of overheating and bad power supplies. While I’m pretty sure heat is not the problem, I will investigate power supplies and powered USB hubs to see if that can bring a resolution. Otherwise I may just have to dispense with the Pi if only because I cant be on site every day to restart it again. It hasn’t gone for the last three days since I have been away so its not being of much use at the moment.

Thanks for your help. Much appreciated.

Cheers

Terry

7

Do you have a way to directly connect both set-ups to the router, perhaps with long CAT5 patch cords? To eliminate an issue with the wireless AP, since both are having a similar problem.

8

Terry,

I’m sorry I can’t give you CPU statistics as I did not use that method of determining my problem. Using 30+ years of troubleshooting logic, comments by others on this and other forums and the laziness of wanting the easiest possible fix, I stumbled upon my the resolution.

Looking at your stats, i would not think that your CPU is overloaded but it is quick and easy to overclock your PI with raspi-config (sudo raspi-config).

Prior to upgrading my antenna and LNA/filter I was processing between 700 and 900 planes a day. Within the same week of adding those enhancements FA updated my piaware to enable MLAT. I was now feeding more information than ever to FA and FR24. Putting one and one together, I came up with 10 (it’s a binary world) when I realized that the Pi would lock up during heavy traffic times. Well, duh.

Here is my stat page,http://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/tdrane. Today was my best day ever with over 1600 planes and 90K+ positions.

The Florida heat has backed off with the many recent rainy days. The temperature has not exceeded 88F for the last two weeks. Once the sunshine (lots) and temperature (95F +) return to normal, I may start seeing overheating issues.The equipment is mounted in a ventilated enclosure on the north side of the house. Direct sunlight strikes the box for about four weeks on either side of the solstice so I’m good now until next May.

td

9

It’s unlikely to be overloaded with data - My PiB was doing 30000 positions an hour [near 5000 plans a day] and was coping fine - it was overloaded, but generally was up 24/7

You could do a finger test on the dongle and see if it’s hot … if it’s just laying on the attic floor it won’t get much air cooling.

If you suspect the WiFi, then you could try home plugs - i’ve been using them for years
amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010 … =homeplugs
or maybe this one with a two port adaptor
amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4026 … =powerline

… Hmmm NZ, where do you buy stuff like this?

10

Thanks guys,

Looks like CPU overloading is unlikely to be the cause of these intermittent failures.

The dongle is a little hot but it is also in a cold environment and is getting plenty of ventilation, so I m guessing that’s not an issue. If it was, I’m not sure what else I could do to keep it cool. The temp in the roof is about 17 C during the day and 6 C at night so hardly hot and its at night when it sometimes fails.

The power supply reliability is worth looking into a little more especially since a hard reboot seems to get it going again. I have also wondered about the wireless access point where ‘tjowen’ suggested I bypass it for testing. I will look at that at well.

*If you suspect the WiFi, then you could try home plugs - i’ve been using them for years
amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4010 … =homeplugs
or maybe this one with a two port adaptor
amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PA4026 … =powerline

… Hmmm NZ, where do you buy stuff like this?*

Haha PeterHR. We get them from penguins in Antarctica. :laughing: Actually we can get these devices here but I am guessing not from Amazon since we are 230 volts. I have thought that network over powerlines might be better than the wifi extenders I am using at moment. But, as a cheaper option, I might just replace the power supply first and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the help guys.

Terry

11

Yep, ours are 240v - but wouldn’t fit your power outlets

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FYI, my dongle is mounted just below my antenna on my outdoor mast and the dongle is connected to my RPi inside using a 32 FT USB extension cable. After my power supply failure I added a powered USB port so my dongle is now powered by it and not the RPi’s power supply.

13

Did you try another SD card. I use the Samsung EVO Class 10 cards. So far no issue with them