Intermittent failures in dump1090-mutability

[rexxbr]

I need your help in solving an issue in my setup.
Intermittently sudden drops in received messages are experienced.
Best illustrated in the Graphs which are here:

drive.google.com/open?id=0BzKgpC4Np2zrdi1va0hwZTdMdFk

As you can see, at around 21:02 the graphs show a sharp dip.
This can be solved by either rebooting the system or by just restarting the dump1090-mutability service. The latter I do now in a CRONTAB schedule, every hour. Not so elegant to say the least, but it’s a work around. The graph also shows my reboot at 21:42 after which everything is ‘back to normal’.
I checked all log files to see if something strange happened around that time but I can’t find anything abnormal.

My setup:
rpi 3, wlan0 (power management off)
FA PRO stick
DUMP1090-mutability with feed for FA and FR24, the setup with adsb-receiver_2.5.0_dump1090-mutability_raspbian-jessie-lite image.
I use a 16 GB SD card HCI. Did a complete new setup the other day but that didn’t help.
Any help is appreciated!




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[abcd567]

You have twice installed the adsb project image, but the problem persists. Hopefully some one will comeup with a solution to your problem.

While you are waiting for replies, have a look at this thread:

Automated Installation of Dump1090-Mutability, Data Feeders, and Performance Graphs

[Strix technica]

I need your help in solving an issue in my setup.
Intermittently sudden drops in received messages are experienced.
Best illustrated in the Graphs which are here:

drive.google.com/open?id=0BzKgpC4Np2zrdi1va0hwZTdMdFk

As you can see, at around 21:02 the graphs show a sharp dip.

Given that your counts drop but your signal remains (albeit with a slightly higher noise floor), my first thought was some noise source clobbering your reception — but if rebooting or restarting dump1090 fixes the problem, that points to a bug in dump1090.

What version of dump1090-mutability are you running? I'm not seeing that behaviour with my instance, but then I built source from mutability's HEAD (then SHA1 commit 00349624c41) rather than v1.14 or v1.15-dev, which is probably the version you're running if you installed it from a package.

Perhaps building from source might help? You could experiment by building from source, and then doing something like:

ARGS=$(cat /proc/$(cat /run/dump1090-mutability.pid)/cmdline|tr '\0' ' '))
systemctl stop dump1090-mutability
./dump1090 $ARGS

ie run it in the foreground in a shell for a day or two and see whether the problem reappears. If it doesn't, it's probably a bug that's been fixed since your installed version, at which point you could try building a deb using mutability's instructions and installing that.

[rexxbr]

Thank you for your input.
I found a recurring issue in the dump1090-mutability.log:

Mon May 8 01:00:03 2017 BRT dump1090-mutability v1.15~dev starting up.
Using sample converter: UC8, integer/table path
Found 1 device(s):
0: unable to read device details
usb_open error -1
Error opening the RTLSDR device: No such device

When this happens, only a reboot helps.

Is it a hardware issue? It is a FlightAware pro stick.

Is there a way I can check every 5 minutes if this hardware fails in order to do a reboot?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Oblivian]

2A power supply?

[rexxbr]

Original power supply :-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Oblivian]

They are bundled with varied power supplies. USB ports may not be full power and high demand devices fall off if not 2.5A or above.

That is one possibility. The other being a dud USB

[rexxbr]

5.1 V, 2.5A


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Strix technica]

Yeah, obviously a USB level issue rather than any issue with dump1090 itself.

I'm running two SDRs (one of which is the FA Pro+) off one Pi 3 with the official 2A power supply and am not seeing these problems, but that doesn't rule out bad power. OTOH, if power were the problem, there is a good chance the Pi itself would be crashing or spontaneously rebooting.

FWIW, according to the guys in #raspberrypi, there's a current limiter set to 1.2A on the Pi 3, which is more than ample to drive a single SDR.

If your FA SDR is on an extension cable, replace that or better yet, plug it in directly to the Pi (if you can). Otherwise check connectors or possibly try a different USB port.

A powered USB hub might help, particularly if you're using an older Pi.

You might be able to power cycle just the USB device(s) but beware: the wired Ethernet MAC is a USB device. Don't do this without a local keyboard or a shell script to undo it after a second or two's pause. Pi 3's WiFi is not attached by USB so it might be safe.

Here's another approach.