JTK – Notes and Ramblings Things we have found …

After not changing the pi for the outdoor temp/humidity I2C sensor, I decided to use the Pi 3 to replace the older Pi 2 that was doing the ads-b flight tracking and feeding on FlightRadar24. This started with rtl_433 already and installed and working as described in an earlier post. rtl_433 is not required but having installed it I’m sure rtl_sdr is installed and the udev rules for the dongle are already in place. I decided to try readsb instead of dump1090-fa. And dump1090-mutability is now marked as maintained.

I found automated scripts for both dump1090-fa and readsb. The script for readsb seems to have worked. I have the webpage at both http://<host>/radar and http://<host>:8080. Script archived here.

The enhanced tar1090 web interface is installed next. The new interface can be seen at http://<host>/tar1090.

Adding a bit of config info:

Set your location with sudo readsb-set-location 50.12344 10.2342.

sudo pico /etc/default/readsb to edit the main config file.

In the case of more than one RTL-SDR dongle in the Pi you may need to modify the line RECEIVER_OPTIONS="--device 0 --device-type rtlsdr --gain -10 --ppm 0" for the correct device number.

sudo pico /usr/share/readsb/html/script/readsb/defaults.js to edit the default webinterface config.

sudo pico /etc/default/tar1090 to edit the tar1090 web interface configuration. A restart with sudo systemctl restart tar1090 is needed after any changes.

Next we’ll add PiAware so we can feed FlightAware some of our data.

wget https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/files/packages/pool/piaware/p/piaware-support/piaware-repository_3.8.1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i piaware-repository_3.8.1_all.deb

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install piaware

sudo piaware-config allow-manual-updates yes

If you are upgrading/replacing and existing site you can use piaware-config feeder-id 12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc to set the site id. You will need to restart the service after making the change.

Confirm your FlightAware feed at https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats. You can make an account and update your position. The service status can be seen with sudo service piaware status.

Next we will add ADSB Exchange feeder:

sudo apt-get install git
sudo rm adsb-exchange -rf
git clone https://github.com/adsbxchange/adsb-exchange.git
cd adsb-exchange
sudo bash setup.sh

If that is successful you should be able to find yourself at https://www.adsbexchange.com/myip/

Now we can add the ADSBX stats package for feeders:

cd /home/pi
git clone https://github.com/adsbxchange/adsbexchange-stats.git
cd adsbexchange-stats
chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

Flightradar24 instructions from their forums are not 100%. The contents of the script referenced does not completely match the manual steps. There are alternative but similar instructions in a different forum post.

sudo apt-key adv --recv-key --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net C969F07840C430F5
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

then add the following line to the file (/etc/apt/sources.list)

deb http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com flightradar24 raspberrypi-stable

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fr24feed
fr24feed --signup
sudo systemctl restart fr24feed.service

There might be a warning you that there is no dump1090 installed and that one will be installed by fr24feed when it starts. This did not appear to happen.

You can monitor status for the fr24feed with fr24feed-status or at http://<host>:8754.

Next we add graph1090 following the install instructions in the readme. The graphs are then available at http://<host>/graphs1090 or http://<host>/pref.

The graph1090 instructions recommend reducing the number of sd card writes for a pi. Below with reduce the writes to once every 10 minutes.

sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/07-dirty.conf <<EOF
vm.dirty_ratio = 40
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 30
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 60000
EOF