PiAware not working since switching dongles

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

I had a Piaware setup with a pro plus (blue) stick running smoothly for a long period of time. I wanted to switch to receive UAT vs 1090 so I purchased a pro stick (orange).

I followed the steps to get it switched over and had PiAware running and confirmed it was logged into Flightaware in 978 mode. It never made contact with any aircraft.

I then reinstalled Piaware from scratch and tried to get it working as before (1090). The Piaware is running and is connected to Fliightaware but still no action.

The log shows:
-dump1090 start appears to have been successful
-no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, not starting multilateration client yet.

When I follow the steps to check the dongle I get this: ’
pi@piaware:$ rtl_test -t
No supported devices found.
pi@piaware:~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

I’ve triple checked my connections.

I’m unsure of what to do next in troubleshooting. Any ideas?

2

Update: I rebooted and switched USB cable positions. Things seem to be working better but still no activity.
Here’s what I’m seeing now.

Dump1090 is running but not seeing any aircraft:
“0 msgs recv’d from dump1090-fa (0 in last 5m); 0 msgs sent to FlightAware”

pi@piaware:~ $ rtl_test -t
Found 1 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2832U, SN: 00001000

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U
usb_claim_interface error -6
Failed to open rtlsdr device #0.

Any ideas?

3

(1) To check health of dongle, you have to first stop dump1090-fa

sudo systemctl stop dump1090-fa  

rtl_test -t   

## After test restart dump1090-fa 
sudo systemctl restart dump1090-fa

(2) Check antenna connection to the dongle. The connector may be loose, or center pin of connector may be broken broken etc, so there is no RF input from Antenna to dongle, and consequently no messages output to piaware.

1 Like
4

Thanks for the reply. I followed your steps and it looks like the dongle is functioning?..

Found 1 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2832U, 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 2048000 S/s.
No E4000 tuner found, aborting.

I checked the antenna connection and it was tight and the center pin looked Ok.

Any chance the cheap indoor antenna has gone bad? Next step using a multimeter to check the antenna condition?

Thanks again for your help!