Messages

46

Technical Support / Re: Power Issues. JuiceBitz Quality Control

« on: May 28, 2019, 09:34:10 pm »

I have made up a small rig comprising a SMD Micro USB socket on a piece of breadboard to allow me to reliably measure the resistance of the cable cores.

I've got five JuiceBitz (All genuine, bought from their Amazon Store) ranging from 0.5 m to 2m in length. Only the shortest one gives the throttling issue.

All the good ones measure a resistance of the Positive lead at between 0.1Ω to  0.19Ω  ..The -Ve is even better as it also uses the braid.

The bad one detailed in my first post measures 2Ω. This doesn't sound like a lot, but at 5Volts, with the PI needing to draw around 600mA, this could be knocking the voltage down to 4 volts or less!   

47

Technical Support / Power Issues. JuiceBitz Quality Control

« on: May 28, 2019, 05:27:41 pm »

When I upgraded to a Rosetta and a Pi3, I bought a batch of JuiceBitz cables to try out various installation ideas.

The one I preferred in the end used a shorter 0.5m cable, but with that I have been plagued with 0x50005 issues and more recently, Wifi Losses.

I flew today and it happened again just after landing. Having time to investigate, I noticed that the Micro Usb plug was warm. Pulling the plug and touching it, it was hot!

Getting back home I tried another longer JuiceBitz cable and no such issues and the Throttled value went away.

Close examination of the suspect plug and the socket in the Pi revealed no issues so I decided to dissect, carefully removing hot melt glue from underneath the casing. The first image reveals all!



You can see a thread of braid is loose and able to touch the end of the green wire's connection, The green wire is data I beleive but is possibly also connected with a sensing circuit, usually a resistor.  When I connect the USB-A of the cable into the power pack and touch this loose wire to the Grreen wire, the power pack activates so it senses a load.

Moving the loose wire away and plugging the lead into the Rosetta, the plug still gets hot and the device throttles. This, I beleive, to be due to poor soldering of the too short Red wire where solder is used as a bridge.

Hopefully a one off but it shows a bit of a quality control issue even with these cables!  So, even if you are using a good power pack and a (clearly good spec) JuiceBitz cable and still experiencing power issues I suggest you try another cable as a first resort.

***Edited to add 3rd Pic, the main culprit, really bad (dry) soldering on the +ve lead which is where the heat is emanating from!

Vic

48

Technical Support / Re: Limited range for PAW traffic - hardware issue?

« on: May 20, 2019, 05:39:15 pm »

Just like electrics is understandable in a plumbing sense, RF engineering can be related as low frequency light!...

Envisage a transmitting RF antenna as being a point of light source, or in the case of our dipole, a light stick.   Anything metallic in its vicinity  is going to cast a shadow and absorb some of the 'light'. In a perfect world, we want no shadows, or at least the smallest possible. This is acheived by keeping the light source as far away from parallel metal parts as best as possible.   

Obviously this isn't easy if you cannot install the antenna outside of the aircraft, so finding the best location to allow the most 'light' to get out (and in) for the job you want it to do is still an element of trial and error but using the above analogy is good as a starting point!

49

OGN-R PilotAware / Re: Problems with my site ...Solved (was internet connection)

« on: May 17, 2019, 11:52:29 pm »

No PC, just the browser built into the TV pointing at //Ognpaw:9000/VirtualRadar

50

OGN-R PilotAware / Re: Problems with my site ...Solved (was internet connection)

« on: May 17, 2019, 05:14:56 pm »

VRS seemingly running nicely on an old Bush smart TV in the clubhouse for all to see.

No local traffic due low cloud but it was gaining a lot of interest

51

General Discussion / Re: Transmit location over GSM?

« on: May 15, 2019, 12:30:14 pm »

I would suggest that the users of this flight tracking feature read the following piece of legislation...

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/669/made/data.pdf

This basically only permits mobile phones to be used on board aircraft if a mobile base station type device is installed in the aircraft and then, only if that aircraft is above 3000m

Airborne phones cause issues with the networks of ground receivers due to the number of ground masts that can be 'seen' compared to a device at ground level.

52

OGN-R PilotAware / Re: Problems with my site

« on: May 05, 2019, 02:58:08 pm »

All is sorted now. The problem was all caused by network issues at the Airfield. They have 2 broadband networks from 2 incoming phone lines, one for public wifi and one for business. Trouble was the two were connected together by a rogue ethernet cable, so 2 hubs on the same IP address both trying to dish out DHCP addresses.

Result was extreme flakiness and intermittancy along with an unsecure setup!

A good trail plot here on 360Radar of a PAW fitted club AC doing circuits...  Rather quick! but 360Radar are working on that.

53

Technical Support / Re: Upgrading the Rosetta GNSS dongle

« on: April 30, 2019, 08:51:07 pm »

Anyone tried theirs with the Ublox PC software?  https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/u-center

Did mine and it said it was a Ublox 7 chipset 

54

General Discussion / Re: Transmit location over GSM?

« on: April 30, 2019, 05:39:35 pm »

Would 5G sort this in due course?

...That's a long hua-wei off 

55

OGN-R PilotAware / Re: Problems with my site

« on: April 29, 2019, 07:39:13 pm »

Great work on the fix Lee

what does 'odd routing' mean - I am not sure I understand

Ah, sorry, omitted the relevant pic, see attached showing the club's C152 designated as going from Heathrow to Stockholm!  Compare it to the 360Radar shot above

No, no customising done whatsoever, I wouldn't have a clue  . I did attempt a manual update this afternoon but it said we were on the latest version.

56

OGN-R PilotAware / Problems with my site ...Solved (was internet connection)

« on: April 29, 2019, 03:29:08 pm »

Just visited my site to investigate a few things .

I have joined the 360Radar community as a contributor with a pi at home so can see all MLAT targets.

These, though are only occasionally appearing on the EGSL VRS, and when they do, they have an odd routing assigned to them!

Also, on the OGN Status page, P3i Data is constantly Zero.

Help!

57

Technical Support / Re: SkyDemon loss of connection

« on: April 26, 2019, 11:29:14 am »

Hi Alan

I had horrendous problems with at times constant disconnections with Skydemon on my Tab8-3 tablet to my PAW when UDP connection came in. The device seemed to be doing something 'far more important ' at times and 'ignoring' data coming in over wireless.

The eventual resolution was to create another user on the tablet (which is never used BTW) and the issue dissapeared. Why this resolved the issue is probably only known to Lenovo software design engineers who built and poorly supported the device  .

Vic

58

Technical Support / Re: SkyDemon loss of connection

« on: April 23, 2019, 09:03:13 pm »

Phil

It isn't a Lenovo tablet by any chance?

59

OGN-R PilotAware / Re: OGN-R with VRS, not displaying ADS-B targets

« on: April 17, 2019, 04:32:38 pm »

Very similar problem here, brand new station just installed yesterday, ADSB reception suddenly stopped working at around 13:00 Local??

60

OGN-R PilotAware / Re: New Stations Added

« on: April 16, 2019, 08:08:55 pm »

Andrewsfield (EGSL) is up and Running. Bit of a fiddly job due to poor estimation on RF cable lengths (not Keiths fault!) and having to run a new ethernet cable up to the tower and install a small switch but Overall it went well.



Antennas. A bit cramped but the best we could do







ADSB Reception is impressive



Quite hopeful for this site as the elevation is the highest place around for at least ten miles. Watching a club 152 depart however. on the 360Radar, we lost it less than a mile out. I think the PAW sits on the coaming and the antenna is allowed to flop down. Results on the OGN site are already starting to look a bit more promising.

One observation though, on 360Radar, the PAWs label on the ground didn't show any callsign, just their height. This was both from the departing 152 whose Reg didn't show until he was about half a mile out, and my Rosetta that I had in the tower with me.

Vic