New Dreamcatcher 2301 user

K3FTW · 2024-03-03T00:30:11.435Z

Hey guys. I bought this and it arrived on Valentines day.

I’ve got it cobbled together right now with the LNB pointing at SES-2 and it’s working well receiving files.

I’m having issues finding the MP3s I see being downloaded though. If I view the file manager from my phone I only see HTML and APRS messages. Where are they going?

Also is there a way to access the APRS and display it on a map?

I have a waterproof enclosure on the way and a solar panel just arrived. My plan is to mount everything outside and forget about it and just access it and see what happens.

K3FTW · 2024-03-03T15:23:09.078Z

Replying to myself. It seems like it downloads a good chunk of the Voa mp3 but then the board reboots. This has been going on now for about 12 hours+. There’s nothing in the basic logs to show why. Just that everything restarts and the uptime starts at 0.

Any idea how to debug this ?

K3FTW · 2024-03-12T07:37:45.802Z

I’ve given up trying to get the audio broadcasts to download. LOL.

My SNR is -8 to -10 and the RSSI is -95 to -97. I have no CRC errors and the bitrate is sitting at 2675 ish.

Is it just not downloading quickly enough before the board reboots itself? I saw a forum post where there’s a memory leak and the fw is set to restart every hour. An hour may not be long enough to download the mp3/audio file.

News articles and wikipedia are nicely filling up the SD card as we speak. I’ve had it set up outside in a waterproof electrical box since Saturday morning (it’s now Tuesday) and no audio.

maxboysdad · 2024-03-12T16:37:01.856Z

@Syed
Could it be that this is because there is no audio being broadcast at this time?

Syed · 2024-03-16T16:53:02.135Z

@K3FTW It should only take about twenty minutes to download. The file is about 200 kB in size. Still no luck on the daily VOA file?

Jonvw · 2024-03-17T19:54:05.812Z

There is a memory leak in the firmware, it reboots every hour or so because it runs out of memory, it’s a documented issue for the firmware.

github.com/Othernet-Project/Dreamcatcher

Fixing possible Memory Leak

opened 10:14AM - 13 Jul 23 UTC

Tysonpower

Currently there is a watchdog that restarts the ESP every few hours or so to avo…id issues with Memory leaks. This works but fixing the leak should be the final fix. The Memory leak wats the free SPIRam until it is so full that the ESP can't receive data anymore and eventually reboots due to a memory overload or similar. To fix this someone has to analyze the ESP Firmware and maybe even the closed source Carousel Library, both is C Code.

If you watch the “Free SPIram” in the status page you can see it ticking down.

bigger files (anything that downloads in less than the hour it takes to run out of memory) are possible to get, but it becomes a game of statistics to figure out the odds the file starts transmitting with in the time frame that it can complete with out a reboot.

I’ve spent some time trying to track the leak down, but my limited skills have not been met with any success in even pinning down where the issue might be…

Syed · 2024-03-18T22:06:15.775Z

@K3FTW There was a bug in the audio file generation. It should be fixed now. Can you check again tomorrow?