Show Posts

You can view here all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas to which you currently have access.


Topics - PaulSS

Pages: [1] 2 3
1
Technical Support / New iPhone v iGrid Hotspot
« on: May 28, 2023, 09:26:29 am »
Ahoy All,

A friend of mine was having difficulty getting his Hotspot to connect and, yesterday, I attempted to help him resolve the problem.

Everything is set up correctly as far as his PAW and WIFI dongle are concerned. The trouble is his iPhone just does not appear on the client list on the network page. We tried with my iPhone (XR) and it all worked okay. His is a new 14 ProMax.

His phone was discoverable but did not show on any lists. One thing I did think is not the same as my phone and MAY be (a)significant with his connection and (b)significant for iGrid users getting new iPhones is that when his Personal Hotspot was green (and discoverable), the blue WIFI circle went white and, so, disconnected from the PAW. Maybe they always do that as, to be honest, I've never really looked and it may not be significant at all.

We were using his iPad Mini to look at the PAW set up, so were not using the phone as the hotspot AND to look at PAW. The iPad was connected to the PAW WIFI and the PAW was supposed to connect to the iPhone's Hotspot but we never saw it appear on the lists.

Of course, the cache was cleared a few times and the 'refresh' button used regularly.

Any clues as to what we were doing wrong or is this feature of the fancy new iPhone?

Cheers.

2
Technical Support / PilotAware & Dynon.....An Update
« on: March 10, 2023, 06:53:09 pm »
I thought I’d do a quick write up about PilotAware and the Dynon SkyView (HDX) and my recent experience of connecting the two. I appreciate this has been done before but this is my attempt to bring it up-to-date and share a couple of my experiences, in the hope that it may help those wanting to do the same. Much is a repetition of what has been written by Russ & Co (useful stuff when the search function is used) but there were a couple of ‘discoveries’ during my installation that might prove helpful.

My plan was to have traffic piped from my PAW to the HDX (easily done) and feed my PAW with GPS information from the HDX (turned out okay…..in the end). It is well documented that one requires an FTDI USB to serial adapter in order to be able to connect the two systems.

I had already discovered that, although they are capable, the USB ports in the PAW are not configured for transmit and receive. This means that two USB to serial adapters are required; one for traffic and one for GPS. With an iGrid dongle, ADSB dongle and two FTDI USB to serial adapters, my PAW USB ports are now full.

I decided to use Serial Port 3 on the HDX for my PAW connections. From the PAW ‘traffic’ FTDI I connected the orange (Tx) wire to the D37 Pin 7 (Rx). The FTDI ‘GPS In’ wire (yellow Rx) was connected to HDX D37 Pin 8 (Tx). The black wires in both FTDIs were combined and fed to an HDX ground.

I configured Serial Port 3 on the HDX as serial input to have ‘Flarm Traffic’ at 4800 Baud rate, with the PAW USB port 4 set to ‘Flarm Out’ at 4800. The HDX serial out was set as ‘Dynon GPS 250’ (‘cos that’s the GPS I have connected to the Dynon system) and automatically set itself to a Baud rate of 38,400. So I reset everything to 38,400. The PAW USB Port 2 was set to GPS/38,400.

Everything was turned on and a very disappointing nada with the GPS going to the PAW but a very satisfying ‘Flarm OK’ on the HDX and traffic appearing on the map.

There was MUCH investigating, including Lee at his house proving the GPS into the PAW is possible (thanks Lee) but it still refused to behave. Baud rates were changed, serial out was changed to NMEA etc etc etc but the PAW Home page still showed a nasty, red GPS. Knowing the traffic option was good I removed the ‘Traffic FTDI’ from the PAW, swapped the ‘GPS FTDI’ into USB Port 4, reconfigured to GPS and green flashing lights on the FTDI!! The GPS block turned green on the PAW Home page and the GPS position counters all started doing what they are supposed to do. All this was with NMEA as the serial out. Switched back to Dynon GPS 250 and the transmit counters stopped. ‘Traffic’ FTDI plugged into PAW USB 2 and Flarm OK came up. It seems that, on my PAW at least, the GPS In does not like USB Port 2.

Lee informed me that GPS into the PAW can be configured as ‘Flarm In’ on the PAW USB setting or ‘GPS’. It just ignores the non-Flarm bits on ‘Flarm In’ and grabs the GPS information. Every day a school day, as they say. What I discovered is if you set it to ‘Flarm In’ then on GPS line of the Home page you get something like ‘Flarm Rcv’ or similar and the counter goes up as it receives GPS info. If you set the PAW USB to ‘GPS’ then the GPS line on the Home page says something like ‘GPS Rcv’ (and the counters go up). The OCD in me had to have it set to GPS, as that’s what I’m feeding into PAW.

SO, after all of that waffle, what works?

The wiring is all good as above but you still need two FTDI USB to serial converters……until the USBs are taught to give and take. One for traffic out and one for GPS in.

I have the GPS in plugged into PAW USB 4. The USB port is set to GPS and I upped the Baud rate 115200 (because I can). In the HDX I have Serial Out set to NMEA Full and the Baud rate set to 115200. When 'Dynon GPS 250' is deselected you can change the Baud rate to your heart's content.

Traffic Out FTDI is plugged into PAW USB 2. The USB port is set to Flarm Out and the Baud rate set at 115200, to keep everything the same. In the HDX I have Serial In set to ‘Flarm Traffic’ and a Baud rate of 115200.

I now have ‘Flarm OK’ on the HDX and traffic showing on the map. On the PAW Home page I have a green GPS blob and the GPS counters increasing. It looks like it’s working well.

The ONLY snag I can see is if I want a USB port in future (e.g. 978 MHz dongle). The only way round this is to have the USBs configured to transmit AND receive, that way the traffic and GPS can use one FTDI, freeing up a USB for something else. This will be necessary for anyone who wants to use a USB port for an FTDI (traffic out, GPS out to a Mode S transponder etc), as one of the ports is always going to be used for the GPS, one for the ADSB and, for anyone who wants to keep up with the latest capabilities, the iGrid dongle.

If we could have some nice weather, I can go out and play with all my lovely new toys  ;D.

3
General Discussion / PAW Router
« on: June 14, 2022, 04:32:15 pm »
One of the great features missing from the iGrid instructions is the router function. This is great if, like me, you have a tablet with no sim card in it or just have a WIFI only tablet.

With the router enabled, when you connect your PAW to the phone's hotspot (and its 4G connection) you now get 4G piped to your sim-less tablet. This means you can enable the 'use Internet in flight' function in SKyDemon and get updated winds, NOTAMs etc.

I know you can always connect the tablet directly to the phone's hotspot but the router function allows you to have iGrid AND have 4G piped to your tablet.

Maybe I missed it in the iGrid write-up but I felt it too useful for attention not to be drawn to it  :)

4
OGN-R PilotAware / Labelling Significance
« on: March 06, 2022, 10:57:16 am »
Can anyone tell me if there is any significance in the labelling of upper and lower case in the type of signals being received on my ATOM stations?

In other words, why the lower case 'a' and upper case 'A'?  I have seen both with 'local' and 'rebroadcast', so I don't it's lower case because it is rebroadcast.

Nothing essential' just nosey  :)

5
Technical Support / Flarm Into PAW
« on: January 16, 2022, 02:27:34 pm »
A friend has an AT-1 and a Rosetta. Can we feed the Flarm IN, received by the AT-1, into the Rosetta so that it is combined with the ADSB, PAW etc received by the Rosetta and then chucked out to SkyDemon via WI-FI?

For 10 bonus points, can we also output via a USB to serial cable to a Dynon Skyvuew and show the same, COMBINED, received traffic? At the moment the AT-1 is hard-wired to the SkyView and shows Flarm In and ADSB In. We could, I think, wire in the Rosetta as well (on a separate serial port) but I think it would be neater if all received traffic was routed through the Rosetta and then displayed via WI-FI on SkyDemon and via the serial cable to the SkyView.

Sank you  :)

6
OGN-R PilotAware / ATOM Station Antennas
« on: April 11, 2021, 05:43:44 pm »
If I mount the ATOM antennas:     PAW--------ADSB-------Flarm       is 93cm going to be enough between the two outer antennas?

I don't think the ADSB matters too much as (a)it is receive only and (b)is far enough separated by frequency; unlike the other two which are much closer in frequency.

7
OGN-R PilotAware / Spots Before My Eyes
« on: February 08, 2021, 09:36:24 am »
I like the new coloured spots on the ATOM VRS. Quick and easy to use is always good  ;D

8
Technical Support / PAW Audio Volume
« on: December 04, 2020, 10:52:28 am »
Yes, I know this has been said before but is there any way the audio volume can be increased? I have mine fed to a mixer (thanks Peter) and even with the PAW at max, the mixer gain turned well up and the mixer volume at max the young lady is still too quiet. I can hear her but some of the words are too quiet to make out, particularly some directions.

I would like to use the PAW audio instead of SkyDemon as I can then get the bearingless warnings and I have gone to a fair amount of trouble to hardwire the PAW audio, so would obviously like to take advantage of doing it in the first place.

We are all big boys and girls, so should be quite capable of deciding the volume we would like instead of having the maximum decided for us.

9
OGN-R PilotAware / Saving VRS Options
« on: August 19, 2020, 06:51:37 pm »
Okay, what am I doing wrong this time? I've gone into the VRS radar display and used the options to configure the display how I'd like but then when I leave the display it doesn't save the settings. When I come back later all is reset to the original settings. Obviously I would press 'Save' if I could see such a button but, alas, there is none.

Day 1 of PWSSHouse being set up, so there will be many more questions to come  ;D  I'm seeing plenty of ADSB contacts but the red Metars are probably a good indication why I haven't seen any PAW or Flarm machines yet.

Next thing to figure out is why my station appears in the Dropbox list but not on the OGNRange map. Search function, here I come  :)

Edited to add: using my MacBook Pro I had no problems going to ognpaw.local and I could see my station's information. I then tried to do the same thing on the crappy Windows 10 machine I have (I can't stand Windows stuff any more) and just get a message saying it can't connect. Is this a Windows thing or am I going to have to find out the IP address of my ATOM station in order to see the 'stuff' on my crappy machine?

10
Technical Support / 1090 Unavailable
« on: May 04, 2020, 08:15:10 am »
I suspect I already know the answer (power throttling) but I just wanted to run this by the august members herein, lest I've done something really daft.

Before I fitted my PAW to the aircraft I tested the setup at home and it worked very well; so I don't think it's the equipment.

I installed everything in the flying machine and now I get the dreaded red blob saying 1090 is unavailable. I tried a different ADSB dongle (the same as I used for my ADSB home station) and I tried a different antenna (which was placed outside the cockpit on the engine cowling). In all cases I got the same indications.

I did open up the ADSB restrictions to allow all traffic to be shown but that did nothing......as expected if there's a red 'unavailable' blob.

To the power then. I am running my PAW from a Charge4 (top left USB). From the Charge4 to the PAW I probably have maximum of a 2m cable run. This cable is 18AWG, using the screw-on USB/min-USB plugs recommended by Jeremy in a post some time ago. I haven't run everything with the engine running yet but the battery seems to be full of volts so I don't think that is the problem.

Is this all about the power throttling or am I missing something else?




11
Technical Support / Dipoles
« on: March 15, 2020, 01:24:47 pm »
What is going to give me the best set up, assuming the antennas end up mounted in the same place inside a fabric aircraft; either an end-fed dipole (like wot Rostetta has) plugged directly into the ADSB dongle (with USB to PAW box) or centre-fed dipole (aka the PAW shop), with coax to the same ADSB dongle and a very short USB to PAW box. I need the USB lead because the ADSB dongle is basically too big to allow the GPS mouse to plug comfortably into the USB slots.

My shortest post I think  ;D

12
Technical Support / Bluetooth Volume
« on: March 08, 2020, 09:02:42 am »
Okay, so I know it's not strictly PAW but (a)it is related and (b)I know there are plenty of electro-gurus who hang around these hallowed halls and it's the brains of those I wish to pick.

I want to be able to Bluetooth audio from my iPad Mini to BOTH of my David Clark One-X headsets to get traffic warnings (told you it was related). Admittedly, these will come from SkyDemon instead of my PAW but that saves me having to get a mixer in order to get PAW traffic & SD nav warnings separately. These headsets pair nicely to the iPad but, obviously, you can only get Bluetooth audio to one at a time. The solution was to buy a Bluetooth splitter. I got the one in the photos below because I can run it directly off my Charge4 and, because it doesn't have a power on/off button, it means it will come on with aircraft power going to my Charge4 and no silly reaching under the panel to turn it on. So far, so good, I think  ???

Next my thoughts turned to shutting up the nagging from my iPad if things get busy in the circuit etc. Easiest solution is to turn off the Bluetooth on the headsets. Yes, that will work but it's not ideal fumbling around over my shoulder to do that and I would prefer a neat panel solution. I am far too retentive to have things stuck on the panel, abhor wires showing and don't do velcro, so the solution needs to be hidden, just as the Charge4 and Bluetooth splitter are hidden behind the panel  :D

I do have a very convenient hole in the sub-panel beneath the throttle panel and thought this would be a lovely place to plonk a volume control.....and so my thoughts turned to using that as a solution to my Bluetooth audio 'concerns' and this is where I would like any thoughts on what I think I might be able to do.

As per my diagram below (carefully hidden above the great big picture of the splitter), I am thinking that I can take the audio output from the iPad Mini and run it through a volume control potentiometer prior to it getting to the Bluetooth splitter. Now, I know I haven't used the correct symbology for a potentiometer etc but I wanted to make plain my thoughts on how this might be achieved, rather than draw up a wiring diagram for someone to construct it for me.

So, sages of electro things, do you think this is a 'goer' or do I fall foul of things like impedance.....about which I don't have a clue?

Thank you for your forbearance in yet another War & Peace posting by my good self  ;D




13
General Discussion / Happy Customer
« on: February 21, 2020, 11:19:16 am »
At LONG last I have finally flicked the PAW switch on and I have to say I am a happy camper  :)

I have the Classic shell, because it will be permanently-fitted with external antennas and I like the small size of the Classic box. I have retrofitted a Pi 3B+ and the old Pi 2 will be used for my ADSB receiving 'station' when I set it up in the UK. As I'm just playing at the moment, the G-Mouse GPS antenna is sitting on a window sill, as is the 'normal' ADSB antenna.

First of all I followed the instructions for formatting the SD card  and chose to use an 8GB card, as some people on the Forum seem to have had problems with higher capacity cards. I did the complete overwrite format as instructed and that was very easy using the recommended formatting software. I then downloaded the June 2019 software and copied the files into the root of the SD card, popped it into the PAW and plugged in power. I was expecting the initial loading process to take about 20 minutes but it was finished in about 4 minutes and the red and green lights were alternately blinking.....a good sign that the Pi 3B+ internal WIFI was doing its thing.

I connected up to the PAW WIFI signal and went to the 'Config' page to see what was what. On the main page I could already see the GPS block was green (despite the GPS antenna being indoors and on the window sill) and the Baro seemed to be good as well. The PAW & ADSB were red but that was to be expected as I hadn't put in the licence key at that point.

Because I'd bought my PAW about 4 years ago and because I'd changed the original Pi to a newer fancy one, the first time user licence key didn't work but a quick email to Keith and he sent me a new one. Once that was inserted and saved everything kicked into life and I was able to set up Mode S/C stuff etc. A visit to the Home Page showed four blobs of green and the radar showed about 20 airline contacts, with their associated information  :)

I've got a trial version of SkyDemon running at the moment but enabled PAW in the SD menu and told SD to 'Go Flying'. Lo and behold, loads of ADSB traffic on my SD map, so an even happier camper.

After re-reading one of the posts about loss of GPS position I changed the setting in PAW from Auto to Pilot Aware (UDP) and then went back to SD and told it to 'Go Flying' again. This time there was no delay in connecting, whereas before I had a warning about losing GPS position (with 15 in view) and a delay of around 4-5 seconds before it plotted my position. Obviously no being deal but the UDP setting seems to work very well.

I am now making sacrifices to the weather gods in order that I can collect my aircraft from the great guys at Eurofox and bring her back to her very posh toy box at Sandown. Then I will be able to complete the installation and have all the goodies on display. I am still in two minds whether to pipe the PAW information onto the MGL EFIS maps. Apparently the traffic symbols are very small, so I may well just stick to the SkyDemon display and, perhaps, a PAW radar on my old iPhone 5 for a simple picture of traffic only.

To be honest, after some of the stories I'd read on the Forum about difficulties in installing software, GPS not seeing things, WIFI not connecting I was dubious about setting things up. In reality it was very easy and went far more smoothly than I anticipated. Yes, I know it hasn't flown yet but that's the fun bit.

I am a happy PAW bloke  ;D

14
Technical Support / POWER (As Clarkson would say)
« on: July 18, 2019, 12:57:16 pm »
Yes, another cable discussion  ;D

I'm thinking of having my PAW (Classic with a Pi3B+) under my seat, where it will be close to the PAW external antenna. This will mean the power will have to run about 2m from the Charge4 USB supply I will have hidden behind the panel.

In the absence of 4AWG with a micro USB connector on the end, what is the opinion of the Power Gurus on this little number? Price is not really the snag, I just want it to do its job well  ;)

https://www.juicebitz.co.uk/2m-20awg-premium-nylon-braided-strong-usb-2-0-type-a-to-micro-b-fast-data-charger-cable-black

I like the red because it goes with the mist in my head and the braid reminds me of the snakes which come from the walls and tell me to do bad things  ;D

15
OGN-R PilotAware / ADSB Ground-Based Antenna
« on: May 27, 2019, 10:15:24 am »
I know here be dragons and talks of Raspberry Pi codes etc but I thought I would venture here with a quick question.

Just for a laugh I am going to attempt to set up an ADSB receiving station at my house (in Australia). I've ordered a Pi 3B+ and I have a nice ADSB radio/dongle thing but I'd like to know if I can modify an antenna to get a decent external aerial for my house instead of (a)spending more $$$s on eBay/Amazon (b)bending bits of 69mm lengths of wire and scaring everyone with spiders on the roof (there's already enough of those buggers in these parts).

I have a spare GME VHF marine antenna. Obviously it is too long but I was wondering if this could be cut down and a suitable connector welded/soldered/glued to the base with which to connect the coax to the RTL dongle thingy. I think I may need to install an amplifier in there somewhere but now we're getting high-tech and I'll just take one step at a time.

As it's started life at 1.8m I assume I'll have to cut it to 276mm. Does that sound right?

Anyway, not a huge deal if it can't be done but I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on my hobby project  :)

This is pretty much the antenna I have: https://www.gme.net.au/catalogue/antennas/vhf-marine-antennas-and-whips/ae346v.aspx

Pages: [1] 2 3