An SD card image of PiAware 3.7.0.1 is now available for pre-release testing! See the release notes at the top of this thread for more information.
There’s a few important things we should highlight about this release. This is a pre-release version of PiAware. That means it may have bugs, errors or other eccentricities. As such we encourage you NOT to overwrite existing PiAware installations. Use this software at your own risk.
So what’s new with this version? It now supports tracking aircraft that use 978 UAT. In the USA, aircraft that operate below 18,000 feet can choose to use an ADS-B solution that runs on 978 MHz called a Universal Access Transceiver or UAT. The FAA created this option to relieve congestion on the 1090 MHz band. Both solutions perform the same basic function, and both meet the January 1, 2020 ADS-B requirement in the USA.
Please pay particular attention to the “In the USA” part. Aircraft outside of the United States do not use UAT, so if you’re not in the US you will not see 978 traffic.
Please note, you should not expect to see aircraft at the same distance you do when using 1090 MHz and the numbers you do see will likely be dramatically lower. You are also more likely to see smaller aircraft as the UAT solution is typically cheaper and thus more inviting to General Aviation.
The new version will allow you to do everything you could with the 1090 MHz version and adds the similar capabilities in 978 MHz. There have been no changes to 1090 MHz functionality.
When you first boot the image it will look and act like a normal 1090 MHz PiAware. In order to activate the 978 MHz features please run the following from the command line:
piaware-config receiver-type none
piaware-config uat-receiver-type sdr
sudo reboot
Skyview for 978 runs separately from the 1090 Skyview. You can see it at http://piaware.local/skyview978/ or http://piaware.local:8978/ where piaware.local is the LAN address of your Raspberry Pi. Changes to the links to make that work like it does for the 1090 are coming.
If you’d like to feed your 978 data to software like VRS, use port 30978.
You can connect two SDRs and if they’re configured correctly you can run both 1090 and 978 on the same Pi. This is currently not officially supported and is at your own risk.
And one final time we’d like reiterate please DO NOT overwrite existing PiAware installations with this pre-release software!
You can download the image here: http://piaware.flightcdn.com/piaware-sd-card-3.7.0.1.img.zip
Thank you and we can’t wait to hear your feedback!!