Author Topic: Loss of connection (again)  (Read 11010 times)

PeterG

Loss of connection (again)
« on: June 16, 2018, 10:57:57 am »
In recent weeks my PAW Classic has started to drop the connection to Skydemon.

I've assumed that as Keith said, this was a power issue but yesterday when I flew back from AeroExpo I was using a fully charged Anker 20100 battery and the original power cable. I also had the Nexus 7 tablet fully charged.

The flight up was fine and all worked as expected. When I reconnected PAW and fired up my Nexus 7 in the aircraft parking it failed to connect to the pilotaware connection. My passenger tried to connect to his ipad but that too failed. We did note the audio alerts were working fine, so much so that we disconnected the audio! I had time in the queue to reboot the tablet and tried again to connect to PAW, again, without success - the tablets showed the message that it was trying to connect or searching for the IP address.

In the end I abandoned PAW and went to the internal GPS for the return flight. As usual, on landing, I checked and found that PAW had kept a record of the flight.

Once home I reconnected the kit and the tablet connected to PAW powered by the same Anker battery, without a problem. I ran the track on Skydemon and it ran without problem and showed all the aircraft as expected.

So it would appear my problem is not power related neither is it tablet specific. It is an intermittent fault that seems to have no obvious cause or pattern. Perhaps the tablets were overloaded by other signals.

I'll be moving to Rosetta soon as it looks like it is much more robust compared to Classic.

Admin

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2018, 11:13:04 am »
Hi Peter
What software version are you running?
How are you connecting skydemon,
Flarm, Pilotaware or GDL90?

And just got to clarify, you are connected to the hotspot, but skydemon does not connect ?

Next time this happens, can you tell the ipad to forget the network then reconnect

Thx
Lee
« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 11:15:36 am by Admin »

PeterG

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #2 on: June 17, 2018, 01:18:20 am »
Lee

Using the latest version
we connected to SD using Pilot Aware

We could see the PAW hotspot but never managed to connect to it from the Nexus 7 and iPad. We had the message it was trying to connect but it never did.

We rebooted our Nexus and iPad and tried to reconnect without success - we did exactly as you suggested with the iPad

Back home yesterday and today I had no issues with making a connection to the hotspot and PAW was able to run the recorded track on SD.

As I said earlier, I'll be moving to Rosetta soon and hopefully the more robust build might resolve this

Ian Melville

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2018, 07:52:38 am »
What power setting are you using for the Wifi?

exfirepro

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #4 on: June 17, 2018, 10:11:50 am »
Hi Peter,

This certainly is a strange one.

You say you were running ‘the latest version’ of PilotAware - can you just confirm that this was 20180520.

Having run various PilotAwares for many hundreds of hours over 3 years, both in development and ‘for real’, I have on a couple of occasions experienced being able to connect my tablet to the PAW WiFi hotspot but not being able to get SD to connect to PilotAware - which was due to a UDP issue - now fixed in the 20180520 software, but I can’t say I have ever experienced ‘seeing’ the PilotAware Hotspot and not being able to connect a device (tablet or phone) to the Hotspot, so I’m struggling to understand how you were getting this from 2 completely different devices - 1 Android and 1 iOS at the same time.

I would have to say that you were in a somewhat unusual situation - departing from Aero-Expo, there would presumably have been lots of PilotAware WiFi Hotspots around at the same time. There certainly were during my recent visits to Popham,  and Eshott for ‘Fly-the-Tyne’, which would make it difficult to ensure your device(s) connect to the correct device. Are you quite certain the one you ‘saw’ was your own? I am aware that the new software takes a fair bit longer to boot up before the hotspot becomes active than previous versions - and  I’m running a Pi3. Your Classic will take even longer, so you could just have been seeing someone else’s hotspot, which your devices wouldn’t necessarily connect to. Just a thought.

Regards

Peter R

Moffrestorer

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #5 on: June 17, 2018, 12:05:01 pm »
I think Peter may have hit the nail on the head. It helps to try to remember the last 4 or so characters of your PilotAware hotspot Host ID so you can select to the correct WiFi source in your device (tablet/phone) settings. Very necessary if you are at an airfield where there could be multiple PilotAware units powered up. If you select the wrong one and it is password protected (a good precaution) you will not be able to connect, though in this case I think you will be asked for the password.

Thx,

Chris
« Last Edit: June 17, 2018, 12:07:59 pm by Moffrestorer »

PeterG

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2018, 12:42:24 pm »
I am using the May update

I changed my hotspot name to include my aircraft reg to ensure I wasn't picking up another PAW by mistake.

I'll have a chance to see if this repeats shortly and will investigate further.


PeterG

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #7 on: June 22, 2018, 04:17:31 pm »
I've had another go at the problem today and it seems there is a combination of factors.

1) I've tried different combinations of Anker lead and battery and found that the one I normally use works best.
2) I have had repeated problems where the WiFi hotspot is visible and with delays in connecting. Other times even with the fully charged battery and good lead I can't see the PAW hotspot. Often it's worth checking that the GPS dongle is working and flashing as if it isn't, the hotspot is not showing.
3) No ADS-B - The connection is flakey and all day I have seen no traffic. On the config page on 192.168.1.1 it is showing red. When I tried inserting a paperclip it went green, so there is an issue probably with the aerial.

I've just ordered a Rosetta and I hope that the more robust hardware will deal with these problems. The Classic has served me well, but time to retire it.

exfirepro

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #8 on: June 22, 2018, 05:21:00 pm »
Peter,

All good on the switch to Rosetta, but I’d like to try to get to the bottom of the issue(s) with your Classic, if only to rule out any direct connection to the recent software update.

The lack of GPS fix should have no influence on the availability of the WiFi hotspot, but could be symptomatic of another issue - namely overheating due to a fault in your 1090MHz SDR. You do say 1090 reception has been at best intermittent recently, which you suspect is due to a faulty antenna, but perhaps not.

Can you try removing the RTL-SDR dongle and booting the unit without it and let us know if there is any improvement in WiFi connectivity please.

Regards

Peter R

PeterG

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #9 on: June 22, 2018, 07:10:10 pm »
Wilco and I'll report back

PeterG

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #10 on: June 25, 2018, 11:53:35 am »
Yep - that resolved part of the issue.

With the dongle installed I couldn't connect. Took it out and fired up PAW and the hotspot was visible and connected. Then refitted the dongle and it worked.

Will try it for real at the end of the week


exfirepro

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #11 on: June 25, 2018, 09:32:28 pm »
Hi Peter G,

Thanks for the update. Let us know how you get on.

Regards

Peter R

GeoffreyC

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #12 on: July 08, 2018, 08:39:58 pm »
I have some similar symptoms.  There are times when pilot aware is rock solid, there are others when it sky demon loses connectivity.  As it's happened twice to me today and once to my friend who was also flying, I thought I'd better report it.

PAW classic running off a fully charged EC technology power brick. 
Latest (May 2018) software
Sky demon on my iPad
PAW connected to my trig transponder

Flying along fine and after 24 minutes of flight skydemon disconnected saying that it hadn't received any data. 
Went into the iPad settings and it was no longer connected to the PAW hot-spot.   
Turned wifi off and on again on the iPad but the hot-spot didn't appear.

Got my phone out (which hadn't been connected to PAW), turned Wi-Fi on, and again the PAW hot-spot didn't appear. 

I know that PAW was still working as my transponder was still correctly showing the GPS position.

Pulled the power lead out of the power brick and plugged it back in again. The transponder reported it had lost GPS signal (as I'd expect).
When PAW started up the transponder picked up the GPS data again and I was able to connect the iPad to PAW and restart navigation.
Worked fine for the remainder of the flight.

Only other odd thing is that PAW traffic range seemed limited. Couldn't see my friend who was 8km ahead. 

I have the trace files from the take-off to reboot and from reboot to landing if these help.

It's only really started doing this since the latest software version. I think it was much more solid on the previous versions. 

Thanks Geoffrey

exfirepro

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #13 on: July 08, 2018, 10:36:10 pm »
Geoffrey,

Can you check and let us know what Kernel version your PilotAware is running on please. This will be reported on 2nd row - ‘Platform’ on the PAW Home Screen via 192.168.1.1.

Regards

Peter

Admin

Re: Loss of connection (again)
« Reply #14 on: July 09, 2018, 06:59:56 pm »
I have the trace files from the take-off to reboot and from reboot to landing if these help.

Yes please .
Thx
Lee