…from over in a thread about 10 m & 2m activity…
I think I can just about see that spot from my front window… 
My LoRa APRS iGate on 70cms sometimes seems to get pings from all sorts of unlikely spots. I suspect most of the oddities are probably thanks to aircraft scatter, but there are some spots that crop up again and again, more often than you’d expect from something as random as aircraft scatter…
G3WGV-11 digipeter mystery
This morning I noticed that G3WGV-11 on Great Dun Fell was not showing up on Lora.ham. Initially I thought that perhaps the site had lost power but the co-located GB3EV/VE repeaters are OK, so not that. More mysteriously, right now G4TGJ-7 is yomping around Kidhow Pike in the Dales and is digipeting through G3WGV-11 to my iGate G3WGV-10 just fine. When his tracker sends an update it shows the path lines and G3WGV-11 on the map. Then G3WGV-11 disappears!
I am not really up to speed with how this all works. How can G3WGV-11 be happily digipeting G4TGJ’s tracker yet not showing up on the map? is it perhaps that G3WGV-11 has stopped transmitting its 15 minute status updates? Why would that suddenly happen? Anyone have any ideas?
John it looks like the last APRS beacon packet from G3WGV-11 was late last night (23:04:05):
https://aprs.fi/?c=raw&call=G3WGV-11
2024-12-08 23:04:05 GMT: G3WGV-11>APLRG1,WIDE1-1,qAO,G3WGV-10:>GitHub - richonguzman/LoRa_APRS_iGate: LoRa APRS iGATE for ESP32 Based Board with Rx + Tx capabilities 2024.08.14
The github messages is sent out when Richardo’s software starts up so it looked like the Heltec board went through a reboot cycle at 23:04:05 last night, then it stopped sending out beacons. That said, G4TGJ has been up in G/NP most of the day. His tracker (G4TGJ-7) started out being digirepeated by G3WGV-11 to G3WGV-10 until about 14:44. After that it used G3SMT-10 (iGate) for the rest of the day.
https://aprs.fi/?c=raw&call=G4TGJ-7
So it looks like something happened early this morning, the Heltec board rebooted, and you digirepeater continued to digirepeat (but not beacon) until around 14:44.
Dave
Thanks Dave, that’s very helpful. The take away from this is that the digipeater has to send out beacon packets to show up - digipeated tracker transmissions don’t count. That makes sense but I hadn’t thought it through.
I think the reason that G4TGJ-7 stopped working through GDF this afternoon is just that he dropped below G3WGV-11’s horizon as he headed downhill and behind Dodd Fell.
I am trying to understand why a reboot, assuming that’s what happened at 08/23:04 would result in the beacons failing. Maybe there was a power cut - I shall try to find out. Perhaps a hardware problem with the Heltec board. Unfortunately it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to get up there any time soon to take a look but at least it is digipeating.
It also caught Nick G0HIK on Kirkby Moor up to three o’clock:
I missed that, thanks Ross. It looks like G3WGV-11 has just forgotten how to beacon.
Stranger and stranger! Exactly 21 hours after G3WGV-11 stopped beaconing it mysteriously started again at 20:04 this evening. Well it must know what it’s doing… why should it bother to tell me?!
HI, I am running several trackers, using lilygo boards and i gates without any issues, however I have just got two heltec boards v3, they flash ok, but they cant appear to connect to the wifi, even with the router next to the board Any thoughts. Dave
Silly question but have you set the wifi essid and password correctly ? I once entered an extra space in the password and that prevented it from connecting.
Connecting to the internet is a two stage affair. First it has to authentic with you WiFi router ( essid and password need to be correct) and then it has to send out a DHCP request - asking for an IP address, DNS server, default route and netmask. The OLED display should say “Connected” when it’s authenticates with your WiF box (essid and password correct) and then display an IP address once DHCP has been successful. If authentication fails, it should go into Auto AP mode (it becomes a WiFI Access Point itself) so you can connect to it from you phone and access the web server. It should come up with ESSId NOCALl-10 and you should be able to connect to it using your phone (password is 12344567890) by entering http://192.168.4.1.
Dave
Hi. Yes I’ve set the WiFi to another router and still get the same issue. Yes I’ve double checked the password and SSID.
Does it try to go into AutoAP mode ? Can you try to connect to NOCALL-10 (password 1234567890) from your phone ?
Also what repository are you using ? For an iGate or digirepeater it should be:
and for a tracker it should be
Can you share the file data/igate_conf,json (obviously with the password for your WiFi deleted) ?
Dave
Something stirs vaguely in the ageing G3WGV memory banks. I seem to recall that I had this exact problem and it turned out to be that I was configuring the device frequencies in MHz, when it should be in Hz, i.e. 439912500.
There is no obvious link between my mistake and the result but I guess some code in the iGate was getting its knickers well and truly twisted.
Might be worth checking.
Hi. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is something seriously wrong as I have just programmed up 2 lilygo boards with the same details and the wifi connected straight away.
Putting “439.9125” instead of 433912500 should give an error when compiling (string vs float vs integer), but it could have slipped through which might then cause the system to crash and endlessly reboot…
@G4FKI You can test the board by flashing an unmodified version of the firmware and json file. You should be able to connect to the built in AP.
Failing that, upload some code that blinks an LED or writes “Hello world” to the serial port to check the board isn’t totally duff.
Yes, it should, but it didn’t. I don’t know whether the failure to catch the input data error is in the on-line firmware flashing code or the Heltec unit itself. Probably the former. Five decades of programming has taught me that making code 100% resilient to garbage data is definitely not easy!
Do you have auto restart enabled?
I had some problems like this with a Lillygo board, but once I set the firmware to restart the iGate every 24 hours it seemed to resolve the issue.
I now use a 24 hour restart on both my iGates
No, I should have enabled it but didn’t and now it’s up on t’hill and difficult to access, so it’ll have to manage without the reboot option for now.
I now think it’s not a problem with the digipeater. Just now it is digipeating via a remarkable 243km path to GW4BML-10, rather than to my iGate just 17km away. Why it’s doing that I cannot say but perhaps there is Internet backhaul congestion from my G3WGV-10 iGate. The path to GW4BML-10 is probably just aircraft scatter or maybe ducting as pressure is quite high at the moment. It’s certainly not a path that I have seen before.
On my iGate I see a whole lot more traffic in the syslog than ever makes it to prominence on the APRS sites. I assume the same is to some extent true of digipeaters.
With the help of Dave, M0MZB I did eventually discover the problem. For some reason the Access Point that my iGate connects to had disabled its DHCP Server function, so whilst the iGate was connected to the AP it was not connected to the Internet.
Normally I would find a problem like this quickly because there would be no traffic at all but I was confused by the iGate sending beacon packets through my digipeater to GW4BML-10, a remarkable 243km away! The reason, I am sure, is that both G3WGV-11 and GW4BML-10 are on high ground, 700m and 420m respectively. Pressure was very high yesterday and I suspect we were both in a convenient duct, providing a route for G3WGV-11 that is not normally present.
Every day is a learning day here at 'WGV Towers!
One of my contest mates worked GM>LY on 70cms this week at 1685km. May have been SSB otherwise CW.