I’ve been working on this project for a while and by now I think it has matured to the point to really make it easier for beginners who want to feed ADS-B data to FlightAware and many other aggregators.
The ADS-B Feeder Image can be used on a Raspberry Pi (and quite a few other Single Board Computers) as a complete, self contained image. If you are already running DietPi on a system, it can be installed as an app using dietpi-software, and for people who have a different Linux system that’s reasonably recent, it can even be installed using a script so it runs as an app there.
I posted a short video showing how easy the initial setup is, a lot more details (including much more on the initial install process) can be found in the adsb.im howto and of course the adsb.im FAQ.
All of this is open source, free to use (and modify), and actively maintained.
A huge THANK YOU for your work for the EASY button for ADS-B feeders installation kit. It is all the work done by folks such as @abcd567@wiedehopf@caius and others all in one very easy to use package on steroids - just plug and play on a Raspberry Pi or a budget-friendly used thin client (such as HP T520/620/630). The picture below seems worth many words in describing the comprehensive collection of tools:
Would like to add my thanks as well! Was able to set everything up and start getting results with no sweat and no technical knowledge in an easy couple of hours. Grateful to have stumbled upon your site and for all of your effort in making it easy! Thank you!
Thanks for the kind words.
I’m glad that it is making things easier… And in all honesty, it keeps getting better as more people use it and provide feedback.
I’m running your setup on a raspberry pi. Is there an easy way to shut it down so it can be moved or whatever? Downloaded a program to ssh(?) in to do a command line shutdown but that’s not very streamlined or accessible. Would appreciate a link or whatever within the browser window to make it happen if that’s possible?
On the expert setup page there is a button to shut down the SBC.
It won’t turn off by itself, but it will shut down within about 20-30 seconds.
So press the button, wait 30 seconds, and you are good to turn it off / move it
@dirkhh
This is a very good image. Your site has good instructions for installation on Single Board Computers, but lacks sufficient instructions for installation on Linux (Ubuntu and Debian amd64) on a PC.
That’s somewhat intentional.
Running this as an app on top of a Linux distro is mostly intended for advanced users who can support themselves. There are just way too many possible variations and pitfalls for me to be able to support this.
I had initially now even intended to offer this as an option, but a couple of the early supporters really wanted that feature for their testing, so I added it. But it is far less tested, and not as well documented, as you point out
This seems a good place to ask this. First off, definite props to your work on this image! Got my hardware today, and the image was up and running probably in less than 20 minutes (feeding FA and FR24). I do have one question because I was a bit of an idiot.
Long story short, I thought the FR24 registration hadn’t worked right, or somehow got messed up. I showed it up and sending data, but when I logged in to the site, I couldn’t see my tracker. Unfortunately, I did this part while I was multi-tasking and like an idiot didn’t even stop to look, but… Following troubleshooting on the FR 24 site, I copied a command into a SSH connection before I noticed it was a friggin install for their tracker:
Import safety tip… When you’re not even good enough to call yourself a linux beginner, it’s unwise to do shell things while multi-tasking on a conference call.
Anyway, that went through and installed their stuff, then prompted me to send kill and restart commands for the tracker, which I didn’t do. My question is, do I need to do anything to remove that, or would it just have reinstalled the same tracker stuff that’s part of the image anyway? Everything is working, I see it feeding data (and my tracker shows on the site), and I’ve even rebooted the RPi unit once while I moved it to its temporary location. I’m kind of in the “it’s working, don’t mess with it” frame of mind, but if there’s a chance it’s going to bork later, better to deal with it.
Personally, I would uninstall their feeder because their software is… err… not great. And while it most likely wasn’t enabled to auto-start, I wouldn’t want this laying around.
ssh into your feeder as root and run the following commands.
The first one uninstalls their feeder app (you already have this through the image in managed way)
The next one removes adding their repo (that would allow them to install random stuff on your system…)
The third one simply reloads the package database, now that their repo was removed
Using feeders through docker in necessary, and an easy way-out on an OS on which the aggregator site suppled feeder packages are not compatible.
However on RPi running OS like Raspberry Pi OS, DietPi OS for RPi, and Ubuntu for RPi, the feeder software supplied by almost all agreggator sites are compatible, and can be installed directly without docker, and run smoothly. In this situation, I do not like to unnecessasitily add complexity to my system by using additional layer of Docker.
I hear you abcd567
There are a lot of different scenarios and different target audiences.
The adsb.im image is targeting a few of them
beginners who don’t want to deal with a command line and/or prefer a web UI
people who would like to feed multiple aggregators from the same device without having to deal with the complexity of doing so themselves
people who have multiple feeder stations and want to have a combined view of the data that they are collecting (i.e., their own mini-aggregator), but still want to individually feed the aggregator(s)
There are lots of other audiences who have different needs and for whom this image might be less useful. Technical experts who want to finely control every detail of their system. People who simply trust a commercial vendor and are happy to execute code as superuser that said vendor sends them. People who think abstraction equals complexity.
I’m very happy to acknowledge that the image isn’t for everyone - but it appears to work well for quite a few people at this time.
I’d definitely be a target case for his image. My heavily involved Linux days are 15+ years in my past. Today I barely remember enough to keep my Plex server up and running. In a case like the ads-b feeder, I don’t have the time to relearn what I’ve forgotten, so an out-of-the-box image like this where I can just click a few things and go was ideal. Once upon a time I would have much preferred doing everything myself, but those days are behind me, at least for now.
This may be a dumb newb question but how would I transfer my existing piaware over to this? Is there a ssh command to export my antenna id and user account from piaware to a file and then just drop the file on the new sd card with this installed? Do I have to sign up to all the ADSB feeder websites first?
I believe that’s the main programs installed by the script you mentioned.
Possibly it just used the existing data on port 30005 and didn’t install dump1090 … then it would probably still be better to make sure it’s not running via container + via systemd service.
This response is a bit late but maybe it still helps
Thank you
