Even though I been uploading data for the past 3 years, I never experienced any issues until now so am technically still a novice in terms of programming the Raspberry Pi
Following a failed upgrade, I reverted to creating a new build with the latest Flightaware Image and a Raspberry Pi 2 (originally has a Paspberry Pi B+) but since the rebuild, i’ve had problems maintaining a stable setup.
The system starts up normally and I can see planes up to 200Nm away then somehow, the system stops detecting/sending data at irregular times
When I check my connection log, I get the following
[2020-05-17 13:23 BST] mlat-client(3401): Connection to localhost:30005 lost: [Errno 111] Connection refused
[2020-05-17 13:23 BST] mlat-client(3401): Reconnecting in 0.5 seconds
Sometimes when I restart Dump 1090 the system will work but sometimes I have to restart the Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately this only works for so long so I know there is an underlying issue.
Is it the Pi or the Flightaware dongle (Blue One) or have I somehow just got a duff Pi Build and need to start again.
Unfortunately I’m only in work one day a week (Pi situated in a school where i work) but have remote access to it.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. As I say, I’m a novice at this and lost 3 years stats as I didn’t realise after changing the Pi B+ to a 2, I could change the feeder code on my Pi2 to reflect statistics from Pi B+ - I unfortunately deleted the Pi B+ data before I realised this) Not that this has anything to do with my current situation but I’m learning!!
Are you using a proper power supply and a working SD card?
From what can be read in the forum, these two things can be the root cause of several mysterous symptoms
I recently had a feeder that would randomly stop feeding. I pulled my hair out trying to figure out the problem. Finally purchased a new FlightAware Pro Stick Plus, replaced the dongle and have had no issues at all. On thing that was noticed using the old dongle was it was getting really warm in use.
That is something that is niggling at the back of my mind as I felt it last week when replacing with the new pi and card. It wasn’t overly warm. Mind you, it starts backup up again with a restart.
I’m open to all options although purchasing a new one might be problematic as some places are out of stock at moment. Amazon might have one but may have to pay a bit more.
That is exactly what was happening to me. The feeder would quit, reboot, and it would start right back up. Sometimes for an hour or two and sometimes for several days. Since I replaced the dongle it has been up continously for three weeks.
An alternative I worked out with a similar wifi problem involved pinging my router at 5 minute intervals and if no result, then restarting the wifi code. If it was still dead, then forcing a reboot. Save this in /boot/checkwifi.sh Be sure to use your own router IP address to get it working. The file /home/pi/wifidown.txt will tell you when restarting and rebooting was needed.
sudo nano /boot/checkwifi.sh
ping -c 4 192.168.251.1 >/dev/null
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
exit 0
else
touch /home/pi/wifidown.txt
/bin/echo "Restarting wlan0 " $(date) >> /home/pi/wifidown.txt
/sbin/ifdown – force wlan0
sleep 3
/sbin/ifup --force wlan0
fi
sleep 10
ping -c 4 192.168.251.1 >/dev/null
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
exit 0
else
/bin/echo “Wireless still not working, rebooting” $(date) >> /home/pi/wifidown.txt
sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now
fi
This script is run every 5 minutes as a cron job. Add this line to /etc/crontab file
sudo nano /etc/crontab
Well, I have replaced the Pi2 with another Pi2 and a new PSU. I’ve also installed and configured a new card with the FlightAware image and added an extra feed to see how things go. If all appears stable, I’ll take an image to that card - just in case then add in other feeds. Probably should have initially went with the bare bones first to rule out any issues with feeder software but I’ll keep an eye on it over the next while to see what happens
