Dump1090-mutability on OpenWrt

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
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The most recent version of Dump1090 for OpenWRT that I have been able to find for my device has been from November 2014. I’ve also seen make files out there for building a newer version, provided that one has the appropriate tools and know-how, which I don’t.

Perhaps this is old news, but I recently noticed that a precompiled newer version, dated October 2nd 2016, is in the packages list for the bleeding-edge ‘trunk’ version of OpenWRT.
https://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/trunk/ramips/mt7620/packages/packages

Using one of the pre-built trunk snapshots for my mini router, I upgraded from ‘Chaos Calmer’ to ‘Designated Driver’ and installed the web based configuration editor, Luci, and Dump1090-mutability. After a couple of very minor hiccups, up came the now-familiar Open Street Maps map along with the range-rings and coloured aircraft icons, exactly as hoped for.

I’m currently testing this indoors with a Nexx WT3020F travel router which has two ethernet ports and a USB port. (It’s actually a bit smaller than the ProStick Plus that’s plugged into it.) I chose to run it wired and so have not tried using the supposedly 300M wifi capability.

I know that others using OpenWRT have been looking for a more recent option than the 2014 version. For those that are willing to take the risk of running an experimental, and not always stable, version of OpenWrt, this may be a viable option to try.

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Thanks for sharing. I run DDWRT pretty much exclusively in my setup, but I have been toying with the idea of an openwrt router for playing around on. I will certainly be adding dump1090-mutability to it when I get around to it - I had no idea people had gone that far with it, truth be told!

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My interest was in using the tiny match-box sized routers as a low-cost and low-power alternative to running multiple dongles from a raspberry or orange Pi. If one can get processsing power that is compact enough and cheap enough, running multiple antennas with multiple dongles, each having its own cpu, is quite feasible. The little WT3020 (580 mhz cpu, 64Mb ram) with a ProStick Plus draws less than half an amp, and with the gain set to 43, is using only 36% of the CPU.

Until I tried it, I also didn’t realize that one can actually string multiple boxes together in a chain, with each one connected to the next. This has some interesting possibilites for roof-mounted systems, where one may only have a single ethernet cable available. Of course, running them wireless has possibilities, too.