Fan with Kiwi installation on BBAI-64?

edited December 2023 in BeagleBone AI-64

I just received a BBAI-64, and am mounting on it a KiwiSDR that until now has been on a BeagleBone Green in the metal case.

A small fan is attached to the underside of the Kiwi, hanging off the board at a right angle near the SMA antenna ports. It takes power from 3v3 and gnd slots on the BBG. Is it normal to use this fan with the BBAI-64?

Comments

  • If the entire AI-64 + Kiwi board is going to be in an enclosed box then there needs to be some sort of airflow. You might be able to accomplish this passively with holes in the top and bottom of the box and the AI-64 + Kiwi oriented vertically so that decent convention can occur. Experiment and find out..

  • Also:

    The software installs on the BBAI-64 appeared to go normally.

    I then mounted the KiwiSDR, taking care to align the pins to avoid the first two rows of the P9 connector.

    After restarting, I can login via ssh on the BBAI-64 as debian, and it shows the system name as kiwisdr.

    However, I've tried connecting to port 8073 from browsers on a couple of systems on the same network, and get errors. Firefox said, "Unable to connect. The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy." Safari said it "can't open the page because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy."

    Any suggestions on troubleshooting?

  • jksjks
    edited December 2023

    Does the website "my.kiwisdr.com" show anything about it?

    Are you trying to connect to kiwisdr.local:8073 ?

    What exact URL are you using?

  • I'm using:

    192.168.1.79:8073

    This address style worked with the same Kiwi when it was on the BBG, as well as with a second Kiwi that's running on the same network (on a BBAI (not a -64)). The IP address seems to follow each BB, not the Kiwi. As noted, I can ssh to 192.168.1.79 and login as debian, and the prompt shows debian@kiwisdr.

    I don't think either Kiwi is configured to register on my.kiwisdr.com. If I try kiwisdr.local:8073, I get the other Kiwi that's on the BBAI (not -64), which is primarily serving wsprdaemon.

  • Registering on my.kiwisdr.com is enabled by default. Just try it.

    Try kiwisdr-2.local:8073 or in general -N when there are multiple Kiwis on the same local network.

  • my.kiwisdr.com returns "No KiwiSDR(s) found for your public IP address."

    On Firefox, kiwisdr-2.local:8073 returns the same type of error as before, "Unable to connect. Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at kiwisdr-2.local:8073." Whereas Safari now seems to hang -- the progress bar moves partially across, but stops before it gets to where it usually does when a page is fully loaded.

    As noted, when I had one of the two Kiwis on a BG and the other on a BBAI, I could access both of them simultaneously from a browser on another system using the 192.168.1.xxx:8073 type of address, and could view them side by side on the same screen. And I'm now able to ssh to the BBAI-64 using "ssh debian@192.168.1.79". So apparently there's an issue specific to the BBAI-64 in combination with the Kiwi?

  • jksjks
    edited December 2023

    Sounds like the AI-64 software install didn't work, possibly.

    When you login to the AI-64 using the debian account is it accepting "temppwd" as the password or the Kiwi's serial number? If the serial number then the software was running, at least at some point.

    Once logged in do "sudo su" to get a root shell. Then "cdp" and "m slog". In all those messages does it appear to be crashing and restarting in a loop? That is, are there a bunch of messages and then it restarts with something like:

    Dec 23 20:14:51 kiwisdr kiwid: 00:00:00.579 KiwiSDR v1.646 --------------------------------------------------------------------

    Dec 23 20:14:51 kiwisdr kiwid: 00:00:00.579  compiled: Dec 13 2023 01:07:10 on ai64

    Dec 23 20:14:51 kiwisdr kiwid: 00:00:00.579  /etc/debian_version 11.8


  • Thanks. For the debian account I've been using temppwd. I can't quite read the serial number on the Kiwi, and I'd have to put it back on the BBG to check it online.

    When I do the 'm slog' command, 29,141 lines including quite a lot of errors are returned. Some look like normal loads of data of various kinds, but there also quite a number of "panic" notices.

  • jksjks
    edited December 2023

    If it lets you use "temppwd" then the Kiwi server code has never successfully run. So the install has failed somehow. If you could email the last 1000 lines or so of the log to support@kiwisdr.com I might be able to see what's wrong.

  • Thanks, sent.

  • Side note: Anyone have a link to the mentioned fan ? I need another one and have no idea how to search Amazon for it.

  • Hi Bob,

    Shop around for a Sunon Maglev, a bit more expensive, but they tend to last.



    Note that all of these brushless fans tend to generate a bit of electrical noise, produced by the internal motor drive circuit.

    If this is present, it can usually be observed raising the KiWi noise floor, typically in the frequency range 0 to 100kHz.

    Regards,

    Martin

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