Which configuation of RaspPi is the preferred, and a WiFi question

[Dale Reid]

I've read and searched the forum so far, but no answer, so my apology if there is some answer buried here and I didn't find it.


I have set up to let my Windows 7 laptop feed data to FR24 right now. I ordered and my RaspPi2B has arrive. It came with an SD card to boot. I also read in the home pages for FR24 that one can get a bootable image, already configured, to flash to a blank SD card and boot RPi using that.

Is there a best way to do this? Use the image FR has configured, or take a system and do the get to download the necessary pieces and run from there?

Second, I did get a small USB plug to allow the RaspPi to use WiFi to connect to my router, rather than using a Cat5 cable to plug in. It would be so much better if I can use the WiFi for convenience in positioning the unit closer to my antenna, but can do some running of cable if there is no way to enable WiFi and run FR24 at the same time.

I would suggest that the 'cleanest' way to do the RaspPi config would be to download the SD image that FR provides, and run that. If that is the case, can one do steps to 'activate' the WiFi USB chip to allow it to connect to the router and send data that way?

Thank you. Dale
KEAU-3

[Khan]

Yes, there is a bootable image with fr24 already installed. Check the following link and scroll down and click on Installation Instructions for Windows or Mac.

https://www.flightradar24.com/build-your-own

fr24 shouldn't affect your wifi connection usb. You should be able to use it without any problems.

[RIN67630]

Of course you can run you Raspi with FR24 over WiFi. That's probably the way most of us are doing it.

I suppose you are not familiar with a Raspi or Linux, are you?

The install from NOOBS is really trivial. Just select to boot into the desktop, to be more comfortable.

[Dale Reid]

Yes, I am just dabbling into the world of Linux and Raspi, so thanks for noticing and the hint to get going with this.

I will try the method you suggested. I assume that there must be native support for the little USB WiFi that came with my setup and I'll authenticate to my router first, then initiate FR24.

[RIN67630]

Normally the Wifi gets supported OoB.
Authenticating to your router is indeed the first thing to do.
On the graphical interface it is quite intuitive.

[F-EGLF1]

Yes, I am just dabbling into the world of Linux and Raspi, so thanks for noticing and the hint to get going with this.

I will try the method you suggested. I assume that there must be native support for the little USB WiFi that came with my setup and I'll authenticate to my router first, then initiate FR24.

Don't be surprised if you get lots of dropouts with wifi, I have found it to be flakey to say the least when using it for my open glider station, I ended up having to move it out of the attic so I could re-boot it every time the connection went down, it has been almost 100% reliable since going to a wired connection, I tried different wifi adapters but none were reliable enough. I am tempted to try wifi with my new Pi-3 but it is just as easy to run a 10 meter cat-5 cable and not have the worries.
Ben.

[Sam26K]

Don't be surprised if you get lots of dropouts with wifi, I have found it to be flakey to say the least when using it for my open glider station, I ended up having to move it out of the attic so I could re-boot it every time the connection went down, it has been almost 100% reliable since going to a wired connection, I tried different wifi adapters but none were reliable enough. I am tempted to try wifi with my new Pi-3 but it is just as easy to run a 10 meter cat-5 cable and not have the worries.
Ben.

Are you sure it's not you're wifi router? I'm using a small usb wifi dongle with the pi at the antenna and it works fine (6" adapter cable between the DVB-T and antenna). Shows very good signal strength and rarely looses connection.
Did you check your wifi signal strength? Also, some cheaper wifi routers can get flaky as they age.

Edit: One other common mistake is not to provide enough power to the 5VDC input to the pi. Long runs of the 5 volt lines through a USB cable can lead to significant voltage loss and fluctuations leading to instability. The AC adapter should be close to the pi for best reliability.

[nick223]

I just set up a pi2 on wifi and every 20 mins I had to restart the fr24feed so I made a launch script to check and restart the program if it was down every minute. The pi and wifi stayed up. Come to find out the power cable and supply were to weak. So i switched the power cable to a thicker cable and a apple power adaptor plug and it's been running for 15 hours with no down time.

[RIN67630]

I have filed an issue @Raspberry:
---------------------
I used to have a perfectly working Wheezy Raspi (2B) with a RTL8192CU WLAN USB adapter and a Logitech remote mouse/keyboard adapter.

I reinstalled Jessie from the V1_7_0 NOOBS.
After the reboot, i could not get any mouse nor keyboard. The 5V rail is at 5,105V.
After several attempts to fix it, I found out, that without the RTL8192CU WLAN USB adapter, keyboard and mouse are working.
With another USB-WLAN adapter (unfortunately a small-ranged one) it worked also.
As soon as I plug in the RTL8192CU in, the keyboard and mouse crashes.
Back to Wheezy no problem, everything is working in harmony.

Moreover with Jessie I had -together with XRDP- a problem with the mouse pointer, that has been described here as well in other threads. The mouse pointer comes again as soon as LXappearance is called, even without any change. With Wheezy i did not have these problems.

All these problems with stock Raspbian versions, just adding XRDP and tightvncserver from the repositories.

Could you please look at these problems since one of my apps is demanding Jessie now?
---------------------------------

So be aware: with RTL8192CU WLAN adapters expect problems with the current version if Raspbian.
On the old version Wheezy, those problems do not exist...
But then you get problems installing FR24, which script fails with Wheezy now...
;-)