Very inconsistent results

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

I’ve had PiAware set up for about 3 weeks now. The setup is far from optimal, in that I’m using the antenna that came with the dongle, and it’s sitting on a second-floor apartment balcony (with a third-floor balcony above it), so I’m not expecting that I’d be getting huge numbers of aircraft or great range. I would expect, though, the results to be fairly consistent–and they aren’t. In the last week, my high has been 164, and my low has been 12. Nothing in the setup has changed–the antenna’s in exactly the same place, the pi is the same, etc.

I’m able to connect using ssh, but most of the time the web page (LAN IP:8080) times out. piaware-status reports:


pi@piaware ~ $ sudo piaware-status 
dump1090 is running.
faup1090 is not running.
piaware is running.
dump1090 is listening for connections on port 30005.
dump1090 is listening for connections on port 10001.
piaware is connected to port 10001.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.
dump1090 is NOT producing data on port 30005.
dump1090 is NOT producing data on port 10001.

If the results were low but consistent, that would be one thing, but the inconsistency suggests to me that something isn’t working quite right. What should I be looking at?

2

You might want to try setting the gain to automatic. (-10). By default, dump1090 sets it to maximum which seems to overdrive the receiver. I had the same issue. Here’s my PROG_ARGS line:


PROG_ARGS="--phase-enhance --quiet --no-rtlsdr-ok --net --net-ro-size 500 --net-ro-rate 5 --net-buffer 5 --lat 45.44 --lon -123.04 --gain -10"

This is in your /etc/init.d/fadump1090.sh file. You’ll need to sudo to edit it. Might also be a good idea to make a backup first.

Good luck…

3

Thanks, I’ll give that a try.

After 15 years and 250k miles, I love my TDI!