4 mins for wifi access to become available(was battery startup issue) - SOLVED!

[peteD]

Times for connect/ become visible via wifi seem to vary between 1 to 4 mins(4 being the usual)
Any thoughts.. using Anker battery power?
Also what is the TRX interface?..its red! logging shows repetative fails.
Thanks
Pete

update: connecting to a monitor shows cycling flashing screen with no boot up, if some of the usb devices are removed then it boots...is this a power problem from a not new battery?

[JCurtis]

update: connecting to a monitor shows cycling flashing screen with no boot up, if some of the usb devices are removed then it boots...is this a power problem from a not new battery?

Could be, do you have an iPad (10w/12w) charger you could try?
Or try each USB item in isolation and see if it only fails with one of them.

[the_doc]

The TRX being red may well be because there is no GPS fix (have a look at the text in the GPS row).

I seem to recall my TRX row only went green on moving the PAW outside and getting a GPS fix, after which it went green and started transmitting without any problem.

I suspect you might be on the right lines, first of all excluding a power issue by use of a mains adapter. Then if that doesn't help, check the USB devices are in the ports as per the QuickStart guide (the double-sided A4 sheet received with PAW), then try restarting, removing one of the USB items each time to see if removal of one consistently resolves the issue.

Hope some of this helps?

[peteD]

Solved...sort of

OK Thanks all...seems my battery is marginal, boots consistently in less than 1 min when powered from nexus 7 chargers, one rated at 2A and the other at 1.25A.

On the other hand, my less than 1 year old, hardly used Anker Astro ES(2nd gen) (16 Ah) is rated at 3.0A.

Seems not all ratings are equal!

[Admin]

Solved...sort of
OK Thanks all...seems my battery is marginal, boots consistently in less than 1 min when powered from nexus 7 chargers, one rated at 2A and the other at 1.25A.
On the other hand, my less than 1 year old, hardly used Anker Astro ES(2nd gen) (16 Ah) is rated at 3.0A.
Seems not all ratings are equal!

Hi Pete,
Power is crucial!

I am sure I am asking a daft question, but the Anker is fully charged (one of my battery packs requires an almost overnight charge) ?
and also, I am presuming the same power lead used in both test conditions ?

Glad you have it sorted, and now when you go to the home page http://192.168.1.1 it should show all interfaces working correctly ?
(green lights on all)

(setting to SOLVED)

[peteD]

Same power lead, fully charged, (well it was) have run for a couple of hrs, still showing 4 blue/fully charged lights. It's rated at 16 Ah ,quoted consumption around 1A or less so should be good for quite a few hrs (10+)......but it's not!

Yes, all interfaces working.

Thanks

Pete

[Admin]

Same power lead, fully charged, (well it was) have run for a couple of hrs, still showing 4 blue/fully charged lights. It's rated at 16 Ah ,quoted consumption around 1A or less so should be good for quite a few hrs (10+)......but it's not!

Yes, all interfaces working.

Hi Pete,
I suspect the Anker is faulty, I would return to Anker and get them to take a look.
Also, if you have (or know someone with) a USB plugin Meter, I would be interested in seeing the min peak voltage
I recall the RPI starts to see 'brownout' issues below 4.8v

[peteD]

Thing is, my Anker battery has worked as expected and happily recharges phones etc many times over.

Thinking about the possible brown out issues, I wondered if it had something to do with the way the power was delivered(rate of voltage rise etc) when the battery sensed a power requirement(getting out of my depth now!)

So I plugged my nexus7 into the battery(creating a demand) then plugged in the PAW to the other port....

Boots and works every time!

So the battery does provide adequate power, it's just a dirty startup...I think!
(maybe this is only relevant to the Anker Astro ES)

Hope this is of help to others

regards

Pete

[Admin]

Hi Pete,

great analysis, I think you have hit on something, because the PAW, boots up using little power and slowly increases its power requirement as more resources are utilised and the CPU starts to get busy.
Maybe the Anker is expecting a constant load, and takes time to shift into a higher gear ?

[JCurtis]

Hi Pete,

great analysis, I think you have hit on something, because the PAW, boots up using little power and slowly increases its power requirement as more resources are utilised and the CPU starts to get busy.
Maybe the Anker is expecting a constant load, and takes time to shift into a higher gear ?

Indeed it does, this is the current  consumption (in Amps) for the first 100 seconds @ 500 reading per second.  Its a bit rough, just threw the data into excel, but you can see it working away.  I ran out of time with a borrowed unit yesterday to dig into what it does when fully up and running connected to an iPad properly, will have another run at it over the next few weeks.

[Admin]

Jeremy, thats a great analysis and pretty much what I expected to see, can I ask
was this recorded with only the following peripherals

1. USB - GPS
2. USB - SDR
3. USB - WiFi

in other words this excludes an HDMI conected monitor, and an RJ45 ETH0 connection ?

[JCurtis]

Jeremy, thats a great analysis and pretty much what I expected to see, can I ask
was this recorded with only the following peripherals

1. USB - GPS
2. USB - SDR
3. USB - WiFi

in other words this excludes an HDMI conected monitor, and an RJ45 ETH0 connection ?

Yes, just the base unit, all 3 USB items attached and nothing else.  In effect it was plugged in with the supplied USB lead and switched on.  This was before the GPS locked on (had to put that outside on an extension) or an iPad connected, so the Bridge wasn't transmitting at that point.

I did take some quick readings with an iPad connected showing 3 ADBS targets on SkyDemon (no signal in the office), peaks were over 1.1A.  It will be interesting to see what happens with lots of ADSB targets etc. to process and a voice alert - not sure how to trigger that on the ground though...

[exfirepro]

Hi Jeremy,

If you're on the ground anywhere near an airport the inbounds will trigger the audio alerts.

Interesting power data. Looking forward to getting my C4 wired in so I can get back onto 'plane power'

Regards

Peter

[JCurtis]

Hi Jeremy,

If you're on the ground anywhere near an airport the inbounds will trigger the audio alerts.

Interesting power data. Looking forward to getting my C4 wired in so I can get back onto 'plane power'

Regards

Peter

Well Cambridge airport is 1.6nm from me, but I'll need to sort out an external aerial to be able to do decent testing. 
Let me know how your C4 install goes, always happy to have comments and pics of installations on the website 

[Paul_Sengupta]

With my DVB-T antenna placed in my upstairs east facing window here in Guildford, I get ADS-B from as far away as Belgium, and everything in between, including over London.

When I first experimented with ADS-B reception on a DVB-T dongle, I made a coax collinear. Just having it in my bedroom it managed to bring in over 100 aircraft at one time.