I have been operating with a PiAware Pro Stick Plus (blue stick) - PI4 Bookworm with an external roof-mounted 60cm 1090MHz antenna for over a year, typically seeing a range of 100-150 miles with no issues. A few days ago, my range suddenly decreased significantly to only 15-30 miles.
I have performed the following troubleshooting steps:
Tested the system with a small backup antenna, which yielded the same limited results.
Inspected the external antenna, cable, and all physical connections; everything appears to be in good condition. I also attached the external antenna to a mobile cellular router I own and it was range functional and strong signal.
Despite these checks, the range on in PiAware remains diminished regardless of the antenna used. Are there any specific diagnostics I can run for the Pro Stick Plus to determine if the hardware itself has failed or is malfunctioning?
Did the substitute antenna have a different coax cable running from it to the SDR? Is there anything else in line between the original antenna and the SDR? You could also try a different USB cable from the SDR to the Pi.
Support basically helped me rule things out here. It seems the radio is failing.
I had a planned testing bench power down planned for today. After two hours down the PI was brought back up, I had a full range of reporting aircraft. This on a a simple 5G stick attached to the direct plugged USB stick with no extra cables. I downed and attached my full external antenna, I had full range again. An hour later the range went intermittent, soon to go back to limited range. So, with that I’ll be replacing the USB stick. Thanks for the responses!
Yeah, when it was moved from the production rack to the bench this was done by default. I just didn’t leave it off for very long. It cooled down during a planned power down and started working again when brought back up.
I swapped the PSU with a new one out of inventory when I moved the PI to my test bench. The original PSU is still in the rack box, didn’t want to pull it out through the wiring that has grown in the Panduit since I placed it in there. I have allowed the SDR to cool down a couple of times now, bring it back up it works for a few minutes and then degrades sharply. So, I’m replacing since there is no definable fix nor any available testing utilities for the device itself per support. I have tried the utilities someone else suggested. They are giving me the same graph info that I can already see with other programs and adjust for with no gain achieved with this SDR once it has started to fail. Anyways, I can see in the code that the SDR does auto adjust, though it does not log that value since it not manually set as it operates on hard coded presets. it’s a cheap radio. I’m a telecom tech have seen some PI radios run for almost a decade now, others like this under constant loads do fail and often replaced as needed. I was looking for a software fix for what ultimately became a device hardware failure issue.
I replaced the stick and the original range was restored.
With that said, I went ahead and overhauled the mast and all of the cabling. I replaced the single band 1090 with a 1090/978 Dual Band antenna, resealed all connections and readjusted the gain to 39.6, this increased my nominal range to >200 miles.
I have allowed the SDR to cool down a couple of times now, bring it back up it works for a few minutes and then degrades sharply. So, I’m replacing since there is no definable fix nor any available testing utilities for the device itself per support. I have tried the utilities someone else suggested. They are giving me the same graph info that I can already see with other programs and adjust for with no gain achieved with this SDR once it has started to fail. Anyways, I can see in the code that the SDR does auto adjust, though it does not log that value since it not manually set as it operates on hard coded presets. it’s a cheap radio. I’m a telecom tech have seen some PI radios run for almost a decade now, others like this under constant loads do fail and often replaced as needed. I was looking for a software fix for what ultimately became a device hardware failure issue.