A couple of questions re: AIS tracking

[tchawk]

Not sure where else would be best to post, so taking a shot here will work. Let me know if this is the wrong spot and I can move it along.

I have an AIS station that I had just set up several days ago on my Windows 10 pc (I'm fresh outa pi's) and have it successfully sending data to marine traffic dot com. It's just a small one and the antenna isn't real high yet, as it was just to see if I could successfully figure it out. It will get relocated this weekend. Depending on what I can find out about this.

As mentioned, I am using a Windows 10pc which is a new computer I built in February. I am currently using an RTL-SDR V3.0 dongle and SDR++ to gather the signal and then piping that info via VA cable to AISmon 2.3.0 to decode which is then being sent UDP to MarineTraffic.com. I am using a DIY spider antenna similar to the DIY spider I am using for my plane tracking with the Pi, just longer element for 162Mhz.

My question is concerning the SDR programs and their issues or reliability for others that may be using them. I have tried SDR#, SDR Console and as of about 15hrs ago, am trying SDR++. All three of them freeze up after a random amount of time. I do know that SDR# has had a history of that, and I had an old version from messing around with listening to online web server radio stations, so I updated to the newest version from the end of February this year since it said it had updated RTL-SDR drivers included in it. That made it about 6 or 7 hrs before freezing. SDR Console the same, but I liked the look of SDR# better and I am a tad more familiar with it, so went back to it. It ended up freezing again about 2hrs after I went to sleep last night or about 5 hrs of run time, so when I woke up this morning and saw it was offline again, I found that SDR++ was a thing so I downloaded and fired it up. It made it 9hrs before freezing. I was so hopeful..lol. Is this just the way it is with these programs? I am having a hard time believing that 3 different programs are doing the same thing, so am beginning to wonder if my dongle is having an issue. Perhaps Windows is to blame? I have no idea. I don't recall having any issues the few days I did Pocsag/Flex pager decoding with SDR# and PDW3.1 decoder. PDW just didn't seem to decode well for me, so stopped doing that.

Any thoughts or help?

I forgot to add in that when it freezes, I can't just hit stop and then play again. I have to pull the RTL-SDR dongle from the USB and plug it back in and then I can hit play and it does it's thing just fine. Until the next freeze that is.

[DaveReid]

Windows putting the USB port to sleep ?

[Anmer]

My reply would be the same as DaveReid's.

[tchawk]

Honestly, I had no idea that was even a thing....I learned something new today.  I looked and USB selective suspend setting was set for enabled, so I disabled it. I appreciate the suggestion. Now we wait.

[mhm]

My settings for power and sleep is set to never for both screen and sleep

[tchawk]

Mine has been as well, although I never even knew that the USB sleep function was a thing, so it was sitting at default of enabled. Hopefully that will cure my issue.

[tchawk]

Update: 2 hours after setting USB sleep to disabled, SDR++ froze again.   I reset the power scheme to default and then went through and set it, along with most everything else, to either disabled or never and then rebooted the computer to see if that makes a difference. If not, back to square one I suppose.

[Anmer]

Leave the USB sleep disabled and try unplugging the USB cable and using a different USB port?

[tchawk]

USB sleep continues to be disabled. I have used 3 different USB ports, both USB 2.0 and 3.0, although not since changing the USB sleep setting. I will go ahead and move it again since I updated that setting.

[Anmer]

You might want to Google "usb auto sleep".

Seems some options don't always work and you may need to delve deeper.

[tchawk]

On it already and found that I may need to disconnect and re-connect the USB device after applying those settings to re-establish the connection. I hadn't done that prior to that last freeze up, so it has been done now with the USB port change I just did a few minutes ago. Hoping that was it.

[tchawk]

Courtesy follow-up, It made it a full 24+hrs without freezing, so that USB sleep function seems so far to have been the issue. I appreciate the help and will update again if anything changes.

[Anmer]

Thanks for the update.

[tchawk]

You're welcome.