Setup steps guide

Wingbits station setup

These guides will walk you through setting up your local system and onboarding to the Wingbits project. We realize some people prefer written steps, while others prefer video walk-throughs. You can choose from either below.

Hardware Setup

1. Keep PI powered down

2. Connect the antenna to your cable (if your antenna does not have cable permanently attached) by screwing cable connector onto antenna base.

3. Connect other end of cable to USB receiver (dongle), by gently screwing the smaller connector onto it.

4. Plug USB receiver into PI usb slot

5. Proceed with either Video or Written Guides.

OS setup

The video guide will walk through imaging an OS onto the SD card, while the written guide assumes an OS is already installed on the PI. In either case, we strongly suggest using the latest Debian lite 64 bit distribution. While other distributions may work, they also can result in different failure issues that cause your install to take much longer than needed.

Distribution used must be Debian based (if you don't use the recommended Debian itself).

Video Guide

This guide will walk through all the steps including imaging your SD card with the OS, signing up on the website, installing Wingbits software, and finally verifying it is online.

Written Guide

This guide is for those using a Raspberry Pi. It assumes you can SSH into your Pi already (OS has been installed/setup) and that you have the permissions to install software.

This section is only for existing BYOD station owners now to rerun the install, so please skip down to step 5 below as you should already have an account and registered station.

1. Make sure you have all the Hardware needed and that it is all (PI, usb receiver, cable, and antenna) connected.

2. Register for an Account:

   • Go to wingbits.com and create an account.

   • Check your email for a verification link and click on it to verify your account.

3. Log In to Your Dashboard:

   • Once your account is verified, log in to your dashboard on wingbits.com.

4. Register Your Station:

   • In the dashboard, find the 'Stations' page, click on it, then click on 'Register Station' button on the right.

   • Use the auto-complete address field, enter the coordinates of your station, or select its location on the map (zoom in and be precise).

5. Set Up Your Station:

   • SSH into your device.

   • On the dashboard's 'Stations' page, go to the "Select a station to install:" section under the stations list and select the station ID, in the dropdown, which you created in step 4.

   • Copy the updated curl command (using the copy button to the far right of the command)

     
   • Paste this command (on windows: shift-insert or right click mouse) into your SSH window and hit enter.

   • The install script will run, install needed software, and automatically configure the PI based on the station's information (latitude/longitude/stationid).

   • After the script finishes, restart your device by running sudo reboot

6. Check Station Status:

   • Go back to the dashboard, under the Stations page, and check the status of your station in the table.

   • It should display 'Online' within a few minutes (hit F5 to refresh the browser to update Online/Offline status).

7. Troubleshooting:

   • Make sure all the hardware is connected, including the antenna/cable being attached to the usb receiver.

   • If your station still doesn't show as 'Online', follow the troubleshooting steps provided in Debug your station to resolve the issue.