Solution: Fldigi freezing after a day of up-time

This is not a problem with the Digirig, but since this affects my ability to use and enjoy the Digirig, I want to share this information I have discovered.

My goal is to operate Fldigi for extended up-times on Raspberry Pi devices, coupled to my radio using a Digirig. Unfortunately, I have found that most of my RPi devices begin having issues with software glitching after being up for about a day (only one Pi model 2 and one Pi model 4 seem to have no issues running forever, for reasons I am not intelligent enough to understand).

I am not a programmer. So, the easiest solution within my skillset was to force the RPi to reboot once per day, and to reopen Fldigi automatically.

The first step is to schedule the reboot using crontab.

Go to the command prompt and type:
crontab -e
Select number 1 (the nano editor)
Read the instructions for how to set up a recurring task.
If I want an 0600 reboot, I will type the following:
0 6 * * * sudo reboot

ctl+x, Y, enter to save. There is no need to reboot for the cronjob to take effect.

Now we need a way to reopen our software once the RPi reboots. There are several ways to accomplish this, including with crontab, but I found that I prefer to create a desktop file in Autostart.

Go to the command prompt and type:
sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/yourfilename.desktop
Replace “yourfilename” with anything you prefer.

Then, type the following (case sensetive), adjusting for your preferred software program

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Fldigi
Exec=fldigi

Now, this will blast fldigi open immediately upon boot. If you want to be nice to the Pi and cause it to wait a few seconds before opening the program, replace the above Exec line with the following:

Exec=bash -c “sleep 10 && fldigi”

10, in this example, is the number of seconds the RPi will delay after boot before opening the application.

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Not quite a watchdog, but a solution is a solution. Purpose built embedded controllers have a feature-set for unattended computing.

73 Constrainted

I have since discovered that this problem is caused by RFI. Spacing components away from each other, using the short digirig cable, and placing ferrites on everything has largely mitigated this issue.

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Congrats on finding that solution. I was wrong to think it was shortcomings of the raspberry pi’s real-time features.

73 Constrainted