Some of you have noticed that there is an issue with the latest version of the Pro Stick Orange v1.2. You cannot change the serial number on the EEPROM on that specific model. This affects less than 300 devices and a small percentage of users, specifically those that want to use two Pro Stick Orange v1.2s on one Raspberry Pi.
300 units of the Pro Stick v1.2 were made and they were meant to go into our FlightFeeders, where this issue would not be a problem. These Pro Sticks were delivered at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and were inadvertently sent to users. Other than not being able to change the serial number on the EEPROM the Pro Stick Orange v1.2 is superior to the previous version. Our testing indicates that you should see a 10-15% increase in message traffic with the Pro Stick v1.2.
If you wish to be able to change the serial number on your Pro Stick Orange FlightAware will replace your v1.2 with a v1.1 free of charge. Please contact adsbsupport@flightaware.com and we’ll start the process to get your replacement on the way.
Please note, the only Pro Sticks affected by this issue are in the Orange cases and say v1.2 on the case and PCB itself. No v1.1 Pro Sticks or Pro Stick Plus in the blue case are affected. We have altered the design and this will not be an issue going forward. No additional Pro Stick v1.2s will be produced. The next version will be the Pro Stick v1.2.1.
The ADS-B Team at FlightAware sincerely apologizes for this and we will do better in the future.
I am personally terribly sorry. I know how difficult troubleshooting can be. We’ve put procedures in place to make sure this sort of thing never occurs again.
I was hoping to hand this off Tuesday to be installed. I believe I have it working (using a blue stick renumbered) but I guess I’ll wait until I receive new dongles from you. I emailed your customer support but they were clueless.
Some of the v1.2 Pro Sticks did go to Amazon. Please keep in mind they are only problematic if you want to use two of them on one Raspberry Pi. They are otherwise superior to the previous version.
What if a V1.2 orange is paired with a blue stick? Is this a problem too? That’s what I’m looking to do. And is the V1.2 orange a better performer than the blue stick for 1090 use?
It’s an entirely new PCB layout (and some component changes) which should, in theory, reduce noise and generally behave better. The prototypes seem to bear that out, though we only have limited results so far - the boards that went astray were meant to be for our next round of testing!
I appreciate the response from the FlightAware team. I got my orange stick from eBay today, looks like it is v1.2. Since I’m running with a Plus stick I’m not personally bothered by the serial issue, and I’ll happily take a small performance increase. Is there anything I can do from my end to assist with testing if that’s what these were meant for? Running it on piaware on the UAT side and feeding to FA, though it is only connected to my discone with no filter atm.
I know it’s nowhere close to ideal, it’s just what I already had up on my mast other than a 2m/70cm antenna and an FA 1090MHz one. I’ll be adding a proper antenna for UAT soon.
