Troubleshooting
Problems with sightings number
Problems with recording status
Grey buttons indicate that the app cannot connect to the MQTT broker on the PANGuardlaptop. There are several possible reasons for this:
- The app and / or laptop are not correctly connected to the same network. Check the network setup paying particular attention to the ip address of the laptop, and the ip address and port settings in the app.
- Check your Android device is connecting to the correct router (and not switching to something that provides Internet).
- The app is trying to use mobile data. Make sure mobile data is off to force it into using wifi.
- The MQTT broker is not running on the PAMGuard laptop.
- Check the task manager, and if necessary, reinstall, making sure it's running as a service.
- Check the correct mosquitto.conf file is in the moscquitto program files directory.
- The MQTT broker is running, but is incorrectly configured and is not accepting connections from remote devices.
- Check the Windows Firewall.
- If necessary, stop mosquitto from the task manager and launch it manually to trigger the request to allow network access.
After making Network settings changes, you'll probably need to restart the Android app before it will connect.
It's most likely that the buttons are now green. I they are grey, see above. Green buttons indicate that the app has successfully connected to the MQTT broker, but has failed to communicate with PAMGuard. Check PAMGuard is running and correctly configured, and that PAMGuard is correctly connected to the broker. (need a help page on this). If it's still not working, then you may have a mismatch between the name of your platform and the platform names that the PAMGuard buttons and forms are expecting.
- Check the name of your platform in the Android app + the word Sighting or Resighting exactly matches the name of one of the buttons in PAMGuard.
- Run MQTT Explorer and see if you can see messages appearing under 'Logger/Button'. (note that it's normal for the buttons to have = No data provided)
- Check the button forms are configured. Under the Form Properties, the UDPINPUT field must be set to Logger/Button
As for the sightings numbers, this indicates that the app is correctly connected to the broker, but is unable to get data from PAMGuard recorder.
- Check recorder module is in place
- Check platform name is showing in side bar
- Try starting a recording manually from PAMGuard to see what happens.