Messages

1

Technical Support / Re: PAW via Bluetooth rather than Wifi

« on: November 06, 2023, 03:31:50 pm »

I've now received a second dongle and have PAW connected to the internet via android mobile phone (S22 Ultra) hotspot

I've connected another Android device (S20 FE) to Pilotaware hotspot and all works ok

In the status I have:
IP | eth0=DOWN | | wlan0=192.168.1.1 | wlan1=192.168.214.203 | iGRID-wg = 10.200.0.102
In the network settings I have:
Router "Enabled"

I can also access the internet from the S20 FE. Great.

HOWEVER... from the S22 Ultra I cannot get to PAW and when I enter 192.168.1.1, or try to use PAW in Skydemon, it can't find it.

So does iGrid only work fully for iPhones?

2

Technical Support / Possible error in radar.js

« on: November 03, 2023, 02:58:03 pm »

Just thought I'd mention that this looks like a cut and paste error in radar.js

        acft_1.onload = function() {
            off_ac_X[1] = (acft_1.width / 2);
            off_ac_Y[1] = (acft_0.height / 2);
            //console.log("off_ac_X[1] X=" + off_ac_X[1] + " Y=" + off_ac_Y[1]);
        }


Think the third line ought be off_ac_Y[1] = (acft_1.height / 2);

3

Technical Support / Re: PAW via Bluetooth rather than Wifi

« on: November 02, 2023, 09:22:15 pm »

Different hubs use different ranges 192.168.0.254/1.1/0.1 I've seen 'em all....  I've actually got a very complex network and switching would not be without significant effort. The point is that 192.168.anything-except-1 would have been a smarter choice. Easy in hindsight of course.

As for the extra options? More info and a few advanced config options... not that hard (and of course I say that as a software architect/engineer)...

But,, I still think it's overly complex. It has a purpose.. a wifi host can have multiple clients... handy... but for someone just wanting to connect to PAW for running SD on one device? Bluetooth is simpler.

So I think it would be good to be able to choose Bluetooth OR Wifi. From the app perspective (SD for example) communicating with the BT device is no more complex than web calls over wifi...

4

Technical Support / Re: PAW via Bluetooth rather than Wifi

« on: November 02, 2023, 06:36:00 pm »

Ok, so I think I've worked out what is going on with "iGrid":

Essentially the PAW box runs both PAW and Router services (I'll call this PAW-Router).

The PAW service transceives aircraft traffic info and provides a web interface

The PAW-Router service manages subnet 192.168.1.*. It identifies itself as 192.168.1.1. The PAW service is bound to this IP address.

It has a Wifi network of SSID "PilotAware_<mac-address>" and assigns IP addresses via DHCP

However, PAW can also join an upstream network (typically a mobile phone running a hotspot wifi such as "Johns Iphone") which will assign it a DHCP address, such as 192.168.214.116 on its subnet (e.g. 192.168.214.*) . This will be used as the gateway (to get to the Internet).

The mobile phone will have its own IP address, e.g. 10.60.200.76 on the network provider's subnet.

A device (such as a tablet) can now join the "PilotAware..." network and will receive an address 192.168.1.2+

Skydemon running on this device will look for the PAW component on address 192.168.1.1

A device could attach to the mobile phone's hotspot wifi "Johns Iphone" and that device, or the phone itself, could run Skydemon and the phone will route requests for 192.168.1.1 back to the PAW-Router which will pass on to the PAW webservice.

Essentially PAW becomes a local network that, when connected to a hotspot, provides devices that connect access to the PAW webservice and upstream to the internet. One could connect one or more devices to receive traffic information but also a passenger could connect to the PAW Wifi network and use it to access the internet.

Phew.

It's a neat, if complex, solution.

Questions:

Can you plug a USB GSM dongle into the PAW box for upstream internet access instead of joining a mobile phone's hotspot?
Can you connect the PAW box using an ethernet cable to an upstream network? So one wifi dongle and one wired connection (to the upstream network)?
Can you connect a wired consuming device to the PAW network? One or two wifi dongles and the wired connection will provide an address on the local PAW network?
What does the "Router" setting actually do?

Looking at the network info available it would be useful to have other info on there as well as IP... subnet... gateway... even dns... so one can see what's happening.. I've got mine currently with one wireless dongle and an ethernet cable into my home router. I can access "paw.local" over my network and I can have a device that can connect to PAW's Wifi. However my local network's subnet is 192.168.1.*, and my router is 192.168.1.1 and so conflicts with the PAW's network. So whilst a device can connect on the PAW wifi.. when it tries to access 192.168.1.1 it can't...

It's a shame PAW didn't originally use, for example, 192.168.201.* for its subnet. Then there would never be conflict with home networks when one is fiddling at home.. doesn't really matter in real life but would have been good.

Perhaps even advanced settings - for each network interface (ethernet, wifi dongle, GSM dongle - which I don't think is supported) ability to configure usage..

5

Technical Support / PAW via Bluetooth rather than Wifi

« on: November 02, 2023, 03:29:14 pm »

I've come back to PAW after 5 years away to see if it's got any more usable (for my requirements)... But I see that I still have to connect to it using Wifi which stops me connecting to simultaneously connecting to the internet.

Any reason why I still can't connect to PAW using Bluetooth like I can for a million other devices? For me it still seems unusable.

(I did try searching for the topic but didn't find anything relevant in 10 minutes)

Thanks!

6

Technical Support / Concurrent Internet and PAW connectivity

« on: November 01, 2019, 02:04:37 pm »

Has this been resolved yet?

7

Technical Support / PAW not advertising as router - still doesn't work on Android

« on: January 13, 2018, 07:02:54 pm »

Upgraded to the latest firmware and sure enough when I connect my computer to PAW's wifi network I can see that the gateway address is blank (as suggested).

However when I connect my Android phone to it it recognises that it doesn't have the internet but doesn't connect via the mobile data network.

Anyone else experienced the same? Or preferably - a way to make the phone connect to the mobile network?

8

Technical Support / Re: iPad using SIM card data as well as connected to PAW wifi ?

« on: May 09, 2017, 09:59:30 am »

But this chap is using an iPad and it *didn't* work like that...

9

Technical Support / Re: iPad using SIM card data as well as connected to PAW wifi ?

« on: May 09, 2017, 08:03:50 am »

I was sure at one point you didn't supply the default gateway via DHCP to clients to enable this, but perhaps not. 
It certainly would be the easiest solution all round, apart from when performing system testing but I would presume you could fix that by tweaking the AP as you need to...

This is strange because the other week you said that your ipad was able to concurrently access the mobile network and PAW. But that doesn't seem to be true for all?

10

Technical Support / Re: Can you identify which traffic is pilotaware and which is ads-b?

« on: April 28, 2017, 01:43:32 pm »

Thanks guys.

I was just wanting to turn it on at home and run a little something that would tell me when a PAW equipped plane was within range just to see how often it happens!

11

Technical Support / Re: Change PAW to join a network rather than act as a hotspot

« on: April 17, 2017, 06:53:11 pm »

Went for a two hour circular flight this afternoon from Heathfield (East Sussex) to Rochester, along to Margate, touch-and-go at Manston and then back to Heathfield via Folkestone.

Had the dongle (on Vodafone) just loose in the cockpit for the first leg. For comparison we had a mobile phone (on O2, as that's all we had) in the cockpit. We noticed that the dongle had coverage almost all of the time as did the phone. They both dropped out briefly at similar points.

After stopping at Rochester I plugged in the external aerial and hung it in the cockpit. It didn't seem to make much difference but again we had connectivity almost the entire time with a couple of drop-outs.

I wonder if positioning the dongle / aerial at the bottom of the aircraft - so no aluminium in the way might make it even better. But for me - the fact that it was at least as good as the mobile phone - it's a success. And I shall now purchase a dedicated SIM. I did a speed test at one point when the dongle was showing 1 out of 4 bars of 4G signal  : ping 49mS, download 1.6Mbps, upload 23Mbps.

And the £45 Amazon fire tablet worked perfectly (although it's possibly not as bright as other tablets)

I'll update the document to include the details of the external aerial at some point.

12

Technical Support / Re: Change PAW to join a network rather than act as a hotspot

« on: April 16, 2017, 04:41:33 pm »

Just inspected the dongle closer and found it accepts an external antenna. And I have one already (£20) so will try with this too

13

Technical Support / Re: Change PAW to join a network rather than act as a hotspot

« on: April 15, 2017, 02:00:05 pm »

Great work!

If you would be interested to put an app note together, we could put it on our pilotaware.com site ?

Thx
Lee

Hi Lee, I've created a document for you to review - I'll be happy once I've installed it all in the aircraft and demonstrated effectiveness so for now I've put a disclaimer on it!

I couldn't attach it here due to the 512KB limit so I've put it on my server:
http://propelsystems.com/private/dsl/Creating%20a%20cockpit%20network%20with%20Internet%20and%20PAW%20access%20v1.0.pdf

Welcome any comments either on here or to my personal email shown on the document footer

Well done Gwyn, persistence has its rewards.

I have just been watching on the sidelines as you are all working way above my networking knowledge level. My solution has been to leave my iPad mine WiFi'd to PAW and connect the pad by BT to my Galaxy S5 to allow SD etc to continue to get Internet updates in flight. Works great for me but lots of users have been unable to get the BT connection to work for some reason and mine is obviously a very basic setup compared to yours.

If you are able to put a  brief 'paper' (photos etc.) together, I for one would be very interested to read it and as Lee has suggested it would be a very useful addition to the information on the PilotAware website.

Regards and again well done!

Peter

Thanks Peter - perhaps have a read through and see if it makes sense to you.

14

Technical Support / Re: Change PAW to join a network rather than act as a hotspot

« on: April 15, 2017, 01:51:49 pm »

Looked at Voda's Ts & Cs - not exactly clear - if you can find where they say you can't use your device in the air you're better at this than me ) In fact I'll even buy you a pint should we meet in real life. There a challenge! This is where I started https://www.vodafone.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/

Here:

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/cs/groups/configfiles/documents/contentdocuments/vfcon058470.pdf

Section 4.3 (b):

 (b) do anything that causes the Network to be impaired

Hmmm. That's so amorphous as to be meaningless. Without clear definitions of what you can and can't do they could probably only ever say in retrospect "please don't do something [specific] again". But so far I haven't been contacted - nor anyone I know...

Not sure that's pint-worthy but I like beer so the offer still stands, for effort  Not sure how you get to that document though..

15

Technical Support / Re: Change PAW to join a network rather than act as a hotspot

« on: April 15, 2017, 01:24:33 am »

Received the bits today and configured it all this evening. Works a treat. All devices connecting to the plane's wifi network can now access Internet and pilotaware simultaneously. Even my 45 quid amazon fire tablet works as whilst it doesn't have gps it can use the PAW gps.

Now I just have to install it all!!