soft rf questions

Having difficultly replying to comments due to my work it policy... grr..

anyhow Bambuko asked...

bambuko6 May 2019 at 04:56

Thank you for this posting!
I also heard whistling noise, so good to have confirmation I am not alone and not imagining things :-)
Connected OK to LK8000 and showing well on glider tracker, but haven't seen any traffic on LK screen yet?...
Maybe wrong settings?
What did you use for alarm setting in SoftRF?
Distance? or Vector?

So..


I only get the whistling sometimes.. which is a distraction... but livable with..

I'm using xcsoar, and the flarm targets appear on the radar screen, the same as with my 'proper' flarm device.

I set the alarm setting to distance, and the targets appear as normal on the screen, and then with a red circle when they get within that range.

If you arent seeing anything, and your sure there are flarms nearby, ( I tested against club aircraft flying overhead and the 'real' flarm in my glider so I was sure there were targets within range), what did you set 'protocol' to ?

it needs to be 'legacy' to get flarm data in the protocol section, not OGNTP as shown here..

At the club again tomorrow, so I'll try and get some in flight screenshots of it in action..

SoftRf

SoftRF is an esp32 based flarm/poweraware receiver and decoder, that also provides a gps output.

Kind of like a 'flarm lite'.

Note, it appears not to do any 'flarm' collision prediction, and it only has gps height, not a 'proper' barogram, so its more of use as a 'situation awareness' aid, than a flarm replacement.
Also, whilst it can presently decode flarm, that doesnt mean that will last forever..
But at £25... worth a punt..

SoftRF homepage

Although its not producing all the functions of a flarm, it is very cheap. ( £25 delivered from China ), I thought I'd investigate it as a possible input to OpenVario.

These are my notes / thoughts....

I bought one of the 'prime edition mk 2 models' from China, took about 2 weeks to arrive..

March 2019
Powered it on, and followed the instructions for connecting to its wireless hotspot from my android phone, and the device settings in xcsoar, and... it worked straight away !
Very simple took 5 minutes to get up and running, and provides gps and 'flarm' no problems..

One observation, there is a high pitched whistle from the unit.. not to annoying, but noticeable.. other than that it seems remarkable for the price..

Next job, take it to the club and see if it can see other gliders on the flarm part, and will it appear on the OGN radar..

End March 2019
Fired it up on the airfield today, powered from usb.
It can see other aircraft flarms, and puts them on the xcsoar radar page on my mobile !
Also, my glider flarm can see the softrf flarm.

Cant actually fly with it, as my glider has OV and a red box flarm to provide the gps, and having both on at the same time, means the flarm constantly thinks we are about to crash... doh !

Next job, get working on OpenVario, this means setting up wifi, should be easy enough...

Mid April 2019
Got it working fine on OV, and now doing some 'soak testing' at home before trying in the glider.. Presently, I've run it for over 10hrs straight, with no issues.
Onboard GPS reciever seems excellent, I am getting 5 satellites and a lock, inside my study, thro 3 walls and no windows !
It still whistles a bit, but doesnt get hot, and seems rock solid..

dmesg gives me incomplete xfer (0x48

Trying to troubleshoot an intermittent issue with a USB stick control, so was looking at the kernel messages with

>dmesg

this gave hundreds of these incomplete xfer messages.

google didnt turn up much, other than it could be related to the i2c part of the cubieboard.

but.. a search of xcsoar forum reveals...


>"dmesg" gives me xhundred of messages
One or more of these messages might show what´s wrong. "incomplete xfer (0x48)" could be the sensor daemon trying to read from a non-existing sensorboard. 
Rename it (mv /opt/bin/sensord /opt/bin/sensord.bak) and see if it goes away. 

So I did, mv /opt/bin/sensord /opt/bin/sensord.disabled

and it worked !

not sorted the USB remote issue tho :(

About

I've been a a long term xcsoar user for maybe 10 years, ( seems like 10 years anyway ), starting on a HP Ipaq 3970, then transferring to a kobo mini.

I've had my eye on openvario since it was originally a project by the Akaflieg, and started to gather components over the past few seasons.

The main sticking point for me has been the lcd screen.

So, now I've actually got myself a screen, I thought I'd document my build, so I can remember what I'm doing, and so other people can use my mistakes to make their's a little easier....

So this is a place for my notes, and if helps someone out... :)