Second KiwiSDR turns itself off shortly after power-up [fixed]
After running a KiwiSDR successfully on my home network, I added a second one today. During the install of the second KiwiSDR, the first one was online and operating normally.
After powering up the second KiwiSDR, I watched it for a few moments to make sure that the lights appeared to illuminate as expected, then went away for a couple of minutes, expecting it would take some time to update software. When I came back, all of its lights were off. I disconnected and reconnected power; it appeared to start normally again, but after a few moments it powered off.
Both KiwiSDR's are connected to the same gigabit network switch. Do I need to do some config on the second one's SD card so that it distinguishes itself from the first one? I looked around but wasn't finding instructions for this situation.
Comments
At the end there you talk about the SD card. You're not installing the SD card in the new unit are you? Because the software is pre-installed on the Beagle and you don't have to use the SD card (unless you bought the "board-only" Kiwi and are supplying your own Beagle, which is not common).
It's okay if you do however. The SD will simply re-flash the Beagle. When it's done re-flashing (about 5 minutes) it powers the Beagle down to give you a chance to remove the SD before powering up again. So maybe that's what you're seeing.
There's no problem with multiple Kiwis on the same network. Visit my.kiwisdr.com to see them listed and links to get to them.
Ack - now that would be the problem. It'd been a bit since I set up the first KiwiSDR, and I'm just used to putting microSD cards into devices like this, so did it out of force of habit. Took the card out, restarted, it updated the software, and now both KiwiSDRs are operating normally. Sorry for an obvious goof!
No worries. It's a common problem because everyone is used to the Raspberry Pi running off an SD card (which has long-term reliability problems, but that's a different story).