My Attempt at a $115 ADS-B Receiver Build for Foreflight

JoseCuervo said:
Given that I found the Kickstarter by going to Chris Young's Stratux.me webpage, and following the links there, I am going to make the assumption that he is good with the idea and the concept of the Kickstarter.
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I think he is the one that introduced it over in the Stratux Reddit site.
 
I just did the single band unit for $150.. I should've done the dual band a few days ago... Oh well, maybe I can add the second band after I get it :(
 
Pinstriper said:
I just did the single band unit for $150.. I should've done the dual band a few days ago... Oh well, maybe I can add the second band after I get it :(
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You can. It should be simple, you will just have to add the hardware.
 
Just a note to say I built a Stratux a while back and have flown with it side-by-side another iPad on a Stratus 1 and Stratus 2. The traffic and weather is nearly identical.

If you are a tinkerer, you can put this together rather easily with the instructions out there. Even the kickstarter will require some tinkering, but you won't have to search out components.
 
I just bought the GPS chip last week, planning on adding that in, but I flew with the stratux and the iPad this weekend. Super helpful and I actually think it shows me MORE traffic then I was getting before with other devices.

I saw no less than 4 planes around my flight path on the iPad before I picked them up visually. Was a very busy day, all the weekend warriors were out having lunch in the middle of the state apparently.

But looking at other parts of the state and around me I had more targets then I've seen before at similar times of the year.

One thing that was a bit odd, I lost my own target and sometimes all of the targets in certain areas. Maybe I was out of range of a tower or something. Didn't think to check the settings at that point.

Oh and I was using WingX. Avare would be nice if it would actually work on the iPad.
 
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Anyone else have problems showing 1090 traffic even when they are receiving packets on the Stratux page? Both SDRs are turned on and receiving. I've also done a dump screen through terminal on my Mac and I can see traffic, but nothing shows up on foreflight or on the IP page.

Joshua
 
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Caramon13 said:
I just bought the GPS chip last week, planning on adding that in, but I flew with the stratux and the iPad this weekend. Super helpful and I actually think it shows me MORE traffic then I was getting before with other devices.

I saw no less than 4 planes around my flight path on the iPad before I picked them up visually. Was a very busy day, all the weekend warriors were out having lunch in the middle of the state apparently.

But looking at other parts of the state and around me I had more targets then I've seen before at similar times of the year.

One thing that was a bit odd, I lost my own target and sometimes all of the targets in certain areas. Maybe I was out of range of a tower or something. Didn't think to check the settings at that point.

Oh and I was using WingX. Avare would be nice if it would actually work on the iPad.
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I found it always displayed more traffic than the SkyRadar I ran alone side it on long flights
 
I've built two of these units both 978 and 1090 band.. I decided to purchase one from Kickstarter only because in came in that really cool case complete with a fan.. These units get hot .. To me it was worth buying as I can always sell my existing unit to a fellow local pilot
 
Would anyone happen to know if a PWM fan control feature has been added to the stratux code or do I have to compile that myself?
 
I got tired of giant USB cables and needless connections taking up room and making my Stratux larger than required so I put my pi on a diet.

Removed the ethernet and three of the USB ports.


Removed the USB plugs from the dongles and cannibalized a USB cable to connect the dongles to the Pi. The ugly glue is just to keep the wires from flexing. I could have used something better but oh well.


Now my setup is a lot thinner and there is still plenty of room for my PWM fan.


Joshua
 
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Do you think the fan will be necessary in summer months in the shade? I only ask because I've been watching the temp on my setup and all I have are the three heat sinks from the typical heat sink kits for the Pi, and I never see any sorts of temps that would indicate a fan will ever be necessary, even with ambient over 100F which is pretty rare around here anyway.
 
denverpilot said:
Do you think the fan will be necessary in summer months in the shade? I only ask because I've been watching the temp on my setup and all I have are the three heat sinks from the typical heat sink kits for the Pi, and I never see any sorts of temps that would indicate a fan will ever be necessary, even with ambient over 100F which is pretty rare around here anyway.
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Difference between a high wing & low wing. I keep a small thermometer (from the auto shop) in the dashboard of the cherokee under the glareshield. During the summer, it can easily be 100+F until I get about 2K AGL.
 
murphey said:
Difference between a high wing & low wing. I keep a small thermometer (from the auto shop) in the dashboard of the cherokee under the glareshield. During the summer, it can easily be 100+F until I get about 2K AGL.
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Ahh of course. Got it. Thanks.
 
murphey said:
Difference between a high wing & low wing. I keep a small thermometer (from the auto shop) in the dashboard of the cherokee under the glareshield. During the summer, it can easily be 100+F until I get about 2K AGL.
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Not that a fan is a BAD idea, but keep the heat producer out of the sun: stash the box underneath in the shade somewhere, leave the antenna up in the sun, plenty of cable with the stock setup to do this. Actually may look for some switched power in the tunnel of the not rented PA-28 and tap into that for the box, put the antenna on the hat shelf.
 
I'm still looking for a good box, but haven't read the past few weeks of threads. Any good ones that include dual antenna's and may fit a fan if needed in the future?
 
I think I killed my Raspberry I was running the latest beta version and today in flight it started acting funny.. Me pulling the power instead of going through the stratux app to shut it down might of done it.. Any ideas on how i can bring it back to life?
 
Pinstriper said:
I think I killed my Raspberry I was running the latest beta version and today in flight it started acting funny.. Me pulling the power instead of going through the stratux app to shut it down might of done it.. Any ideas on how i can bring it back to life?
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Hook it up to a monitor and see if it's partially booting. You probably just trashed the filesystem on the SD card.

Can likely fix it with fsck at boot time or just burn a new one.

The Stratux code to shut down is not really done right and isn't technically any better than pulling the power other than whatever transients might do in the circuitry of the Pi. They just call "halt" without so much as a "sync" before it, which is a crappy way to shut off a UNIX system.
 
denverpilot said:
Hook it up to a monitor and see if it's partially booting. You probably just trashed the filesystem on the SD card.

Can likely fix it with fsck at boot time or just burn a new one.

The Stratux code to shut down is not really done right and isn't technically any better than pulling the power other than whatever transients might do in the circuitry of the Pi. They just call "halt" without so much as a "sync" before it, which is a crappy way to shut off a UNIX system.
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So just burn a new image file to the SD card ? Sorry I'm not very techy.. Thanks a bunch though!
 
Pinstriper said:
So just burn a new image file to the SD card ? Sorry I'm not very techy.. Thanks a bunch though!
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Yes, re-copy the Stratux OS file to the SD card and try again. Not likely you killed the Raspberry.

Joshua

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk
 
Pinstriper said:
So just burn a new image file to the SD card ? Sorry I'm not very techy.. Thanks a bunch though!
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Should work. Will have to go back into the settings again and turn the receivers back on if it boots, of course.
 
I tried the rewrite is to the card.. Nothing :( the red light and green light both come on and stay lit.. But the blue lights from the radio dongles won't light and it doesn't appear on my wifi options of the iPad.. I'll try a monitor next :(
 
What's the trick to connecting this to a monitor? I found a link showing an Ethernet cable to a laptop but that doesn't seem to work
 
Pinstriper said:
They stay lit.. No blinking or nothing
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According to the docs, that's a sign it can't read the SD card. The green light should blink for about twenty seconds at boot time or it means it's not reading the SD card (that LED is the ACT or "activity" indicator).

When you re-copied the SD did you erase it with the SD Consortium's eraser tool from sdcard.org first?

There's a section in this doc on how to format on both Windows and Mac.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/noobs.md

You do need to set a size setting on Windows to format the whole SD card. That'll also indirectly tell you if the card got damaged (unlikely but can happen).

It's kinda hard to troubleshoot them without two of them, one known working, so you can pop the SD into the known good one and see if it is the card, but you can still go through all the steps carefully to see if you can get it going.

I'd format the SD and then copy the image on to it again and see if the behavior changes. Also assuming you're using the same power supply you usually use here or a known working one. They're not very tolerant of voltage drops. I'd also unplug all the USB dongles from it just to see if it will come up properly with no other loads attached first, then add those back in after its booting.

Also if you've never used that particular monitor or Tv on it, the HDMI can act a little wonky. You may need to turn off and on the power on the monitor/TV after power is applied to the Pi. Depends on the age of the HDMI device. They have to "talk" to each other to bring up the splash screen.
 
Ok, first things first... When I got the pi I never loaded the OS that came on the supplied SD card..Should I have?

Second, I copied the image file to the card and inserted it and away it went.. It worked fine... Just recently I loaded the latest beta release to it .... On the old (official) release it seemed to work fine..


I'll format now and get back to you...Thanks a ton!!!
 
I re formatted the card, unplugged the dongles, used the normal power source , inserted the card with v4 and still no blinky lights :no::no:
 
Pinstriper said:
Ok, first things first... When I got the pi I never loaded the OS that came on the supplied SD card..Should I have?

Second, I copied the image file to the card and inserted it and away it went.. It worked fine... Just recently I loaded the latest beta release to it .... On the old (official) release it seemed to work fine..


I'll format now and get back to you...Thanks a ton!!!
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Nope you didn't need to use the other OS load for anything.

The format and reload may work. Otherwise it gets kinda hard to troubleshoot remotely but there isn't much left from there. Could also try a different SD card if you have one handy.

You may have "blown" the polyfuse (they reset) but if it's been powering up, that's unlikely at this point.
 
Pinstriper said:
I re formatted the card, unplugged the dongles, used the normal power source , inserted the card with v4 and still no blinky lights :no::no:
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Maybe you really did pop something. Bummer. Like you said, at $35 they're almost disposable but yours has my curiosity piqued. Wonder what it did.

Well even if the "halt" is a silly way to stop the OS, at least it also kills the power so maybe unplugging it won't damage it next time...

I've done that a hundred times to one of mine and no harm done, even though it's "mean" to it. Hmm. But I do have a spare... Heh.
 
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