I have four feeders, all of which feed ADSBx and FA. I feed the latter only because their web site allows me to track performance, reboot, etc. Three of the four are "well behaved" -- highly reliable One is not. The one that is not has a great wi-fi signal but periodically drops off line and then comes back a few hours later. It's running Piaware 3.5.3. Nothing has been done to it vis-a-vis software upgrades since it was installed in January, 2017. Question: If I allow FA to upgrade the software will that break ADSBx? If so, I need to know as I certainly won't go that route. And, I wonder if anyone may have other thoughts as to the best approach for dealing with this troublesome little appliance.
Shouldn't affect the current feed script at all. (https://github.com/adsbxchange/adsb-exchange) There is an older version that shouldn't be affected either. But i'd recommend you start with a Raspbian Buster Lite sd-card and go from there. The piaware sd-card image is stuck at Stretch at the moment. Might make a install script for my script that checks for internet connectivity and reboots when there is none for 5 minutes.
OK. Much appreciated. I'll proceed with the update and see what happens. As it happens, three of my four feeders are in austere locations where I have no access via L2 or L3. And, I am clueless as to how I would proceed with implementing your last suggestion, although it seems like a great idea. I very much appreciate your response. TU!
Buster is not really any different than Stretch, except for support of Pi 4. However, there's no real reason to upgrade to Buster until it's stable. Initial releases were less than stellar - I'm sure it has improved but again - being that is isn't much of a underlying difference - there is no real reason to upgrade other than bragging you are running the latest Buster. In 6 months it will be Canary or whatever - and everyone will be saying you should upgrade Canary, then in 6 months Dogface ... or whatever the next animal letter is. As for letting FA automatically upgrade - there is no reason to give FlightAware the ability to do whatever they want on your Pi. I would be wary unless you really know why they are upgrading and for what reason. FlightAware has for the most part killed much of the opensource development in regard to this hobby and has repeatedly acted in it's own self interest in not making new 978 code interoperable.
