PowerFLARM choking on too many targets?

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 11:35:07 PM UTC+8, noel.wade wrote:
I haven't done detailed testing, but FWIW I have seen a similar issue with my FlarmView57 on the latest firmware. I don't believe it's the PF rebooting because when the display comes back it hasn't lost GPS lock or anything..

--Noel

Yes I agree its not the Flarm rebooting.
We figured that out quickly as we had Flarm connecting to other displays and they did not have issue.
In my case I have Flarmview connected directly to the RJ45 on Flarm and then the Flarm DB9 to S7 which outputs to Soartronic Uart to Dell Streak running XC Soar.
You could see in XC Soar that the Flarm was Solid, (not rebooting).
We tried reloading the latest firmware with same result so In my case I tried the old one from January and it worked fine the rest of the Camp. We found that we could not get the Old Firmware to work on a brand New Flarmview for some reason.
What was unnerving at first was we were Gridded and 3 gliders in a row had their Flarmviews going crazy, Beeping and rebooting. At first we calmed them down by turning off the Beep on Target and then later it became apparent that in Flight they were working fine.
I sent a Video with issue to LX as did a few others.
As some have indicated theirs worked fine so it is a Random issue.
Uros had me send him all the Files on my Flarmview SD card.
Mine is working fine with older Firmware so I am ok.
Randy

Like Randy, my FlarmView is connected to the flarm RJ45 output, and in my case the DB9 output goes directly to my LX9000 which showed flarm output correctly. I'm running the 2.20 firmware which I updated just before Nephi, and didn't have any issues with the previous 2.02 however I wasn't flying with so many potential targets until Nephi.

Richard, does your FV data come from the DB9 port, not the RJ45?

Nigel

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 7:52:41 PM UTC-7, Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
Today I flew the first day of the Truckee FAI contest. We had about 14 planes in the launch area at once. All pilots had Flarm (and transponders) which was great.

My setup is a PowerFlarm Brick (V6.02) with a FlarmVIew display (latest firmware, and powered by the brick). V7 and Oudie are also connected to the brick, but powered separately.

When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM, the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the task when there were just a few targets at most to display. On landing there were again many targets in close proximity and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Has anyone experienced this? I don't know how to tell if it is the Powerflarm's fault, recycling the power to the FlarmVIew display or the FlarmView Display itself getting overwhelmed by so many targets.

Thoughts?

Also, the PowerFlarm brick experienced MANY GPS failures during the last two flights. The Oudie kept switching to secondary GPS (internal). TO be fair, the Colibri II also showed some GPS dropouts on the same flight, but not nearly as many.

Additional thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt Herron

My Flarmview 57 comes from the DB9 port. Also go the the files menu of the Flarmview and convert the .fln file to .flx.

Richard www.craggyaero.com

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 11:27:20 AM UTC-7, Richard wrote:
On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 7:52:41 PM UTC-7, Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
Today I flew the first day of the Truckee FAI contest. We had about 14 planes in the launch area at once. All pilots had Flarm (and transponders) which was great.

My setup is a PowerFlarm Brick (V6.02) with a FlarmVIew display (latest firmware, and powered by the brick). V7 and Oudie are also connected to the brick, but powered separately.

When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM, the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the task when there were just a few targets at most to display. On landing there were again many targets in close proximity and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Has anyone experienced this? I don't know how to tell if it is the Powerflarm's fault, recycling the power to the FlarmVIew display or the FlarmView Display itself getting overwhelmed by so many targets.

Thoughts?

Also, the PowerFlarm brick experienced MANY GPS failures during the last two flights. The Oudie kept switching to secondary GPS (internal). TO be fair, the Colibri II also showed some GPS dropouts on the same flight, but not nearly as many.

Additional thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt Herron

My Flarmview 57 comes from the DB9 port. Also go the the files menu of the Flarmview and convert the .fln file to .flx.

Richard www.craggyaero.com

Also get the latest .fln file from flarmnet.org their may have been a problem with that file

Richard
www.craggyaero.com

Allow me to add something that happened to me last week at Air Sailing Sports Contest. The first 2 days, I was getting meaningless FLARM alerts all the time + both GPSs broke lock several times. A friend asked, "how far apart are your GPS antennas? You know they are supposed to be 12" apart, don't you?
Bingo! All three were within 6" of each other. Both GPS antennas were within 4" of each other and both right behind the FLARM which has its own GPS antenna, you know?
I moved all 3 antennas about a foot from each other and the false FLARM alerts were greatly reduced and the computer GPS never broke lock again...............the Cambridge GPS did continue to drop out when near Air Sailing, but was OK when out on course. Several other contestants reported the same issue when near Air Sailing.
JJ

On Mon, 20 Jul 2015 19:52:36 -0700 (PDT), "Matt Herron Jr."
wrote:

.... text deleted
When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the
PowerFLARM, the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly
and rapidly every few seconds as if it were being power cycled.
It behaved normally during the task when there were just a few
targets at most to display. On landing there were again many
targets in close proximity and the FlarmVIew display started to
reboot again.

Has anyone experienced this? I don't know how to tell if it is the
Powerflarm's fault, recycling the power to the FlarmVIew display
or the FlarmView Display itself getting overwhelmed by so many targets.

Thoughts?

Will the FlarmView support a 57.6kB data rate? I know the Butterfly
display will, that is the rate I run mine at. Higher rate should
support more targets.

Insert the following into flarmcfg.txt

# Set baud rate on RJ45 to 57.6kB
$PFLAC,S,BAUD1,5

# Set baud rate on DB9 to 57.6kB
$PFLAC,S,BAUD2,5

Bob

Based on the discussion, can I assume this problem does not occur on the Portable PowerFLARM with its built-in display? Headed to Elmira tomorrow where there will be nearly 50 gliders.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.

I upgraded to FlarmView 2.2 yesterday and flew with many gliders ( all had flarm and all had Transponders). Agin the flarmview was "rebooting" or showing the splash screen in rapid succession when many targets were present. So both Flarmview 2.2 and 2.02 have this issue.

Matt H.

Matt,

Yes, I have been getting this behavior often (understatement). It happens all the time actually. I'm glad that you brought this up. I have seen as many as 5 "reboots" in 30 seconds on the flarmView. It's almost constant. I basically ignored it but it was frustrating as it often reboots when I am trying to visualize where gliders are around me when it goes into a reboot spasm.

I have definitely been experiencing this problem consistently this season but also seem to remember is happening last season before the mandatory firmware upgrade. I could be mistaken.

I think this is a real problem with the flarm/flarmView system that should be addressed. Someone should take a video of the flarmView (or other) and post it here to help the developers understand the problem better. I will do the same hopefully within the next week or so.

I never had this problem on my flarm portable FWIW.

I am brick-SN10-flarmView-Oudie with the associated Goddard cables.

Sorry to be confirming the bad news here.

Sean
7T

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 7:52:41 PM UTC-7, Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
Today I flew the first day of the Truckee FAI contest. We had about 14 planes in the launch area at once. All pilots had Flarm (and transponders) which was great.

My setup is a PowerFlarm Brick (V6.02) with a FlarmVIew display (latest firmware, and powered by the brick). V7 and Oudie are also connected to the brick, but powered separately.

When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM, the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the task when there were just a few targets at most to display. On landing there were again many targets in close proximity and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Has anyone experienced this? I don't know how to tell if it is the Powerflarm's fault, recycling the power to the FlarmVIew display or the FlarmView Display itself getting overwhelmed by so many targets.

Thoughts?

Also, the PowerFlarm brick experienced MANY GPS failures during the last two flights. The Oudie kept switching to secondary GPS (internal). TO be fair, the Colibri II also showed some GPS dropouts on the same flight, but not nearly as many.

Additional thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt Herron

I have a beta update for the FlarmView that may solve the problem. Email me and I will forward the FlarmView beta.

Thanks,

Richard
www.craggyaero.com