yesterday evening i did some dump1090 research - hmmmmm very confusing (at least for me)
→ i started from scratch with the actual raspian realease (3.18 2015-05-05)
→ installed libusb (sudo apt-get install git build-essential cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev screen)
→ installed rtl-sdr from here (git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git)
→ installed dump1090 from here (git clone git://github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090.git)
up to here anything is fine and works perfect - but - my questions are:
is this libusb the one to choose ?
is the rtl-sdr the one to choose ?
dump1090 what forks are still maintained ?
what are the big point differences between antirez, malcolmrobb, mutability, flightaware etc. ?
because it would take days or weeks (or even more) to look into all these options on github - maybe some of you can help and explain …
For me, it’s about using the latest development fork from a very active and involved person active in this forum. Oliver’s development version has allowed me to participate in the latest MLAT project and for that I am grateful. Oliver himself has admitted that he’s not a web developer, so I’ve made small modifications to the web GUI to suit my own needs.
…Tom
That’s how I started 6 month ago And I have tried a couple of others dump1090 forks too…
I found out that mutability is the most active maintained dump1090 fork. I like the features, especially in the v1.15 dev version. There is a rtl-sdr version available for it:(https://github.com/mutability/librtlsdr/releases). It uses the libusb-1.0-0-dev, available in raspian. Obj gives fast and useful answers to questions. His work has a very good quality. For me dump1090-mutability is at this moment my favorite choice.
But how would life be, if things were that simple
I give you my opinion and I hope you try it. But I also hope that this won’t stop you from exploring this forum and all the Github documentation. You can setup your environment in many different ways. It depends on your wishes and expectations. I think different people look for different solutions
but what are the additional features over antirez, malcolmrobb and flightaware you are talking about?
looks like this is the same i used to install (sudo apt-get install git build-essential cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev screen) - or did i miss something?
but as he is working primarily on the flightaware fork - why not this one?
simple to answer - easy
in the end i want to run one single ads-b station primary feeding virtualradarserver on my macmini server additional and not too tied-up flightaware and planefinder feeding. it should run stable and secure without unnecessary access options for any of these platforms. and of course it should use the best algorithms to get useful data out of the received ads-b broadcasts.
tom
p.s. saw that you have five stations running - why this? i have two at the moment - one only for testing. but five …
The flightaware fork of dump1090 is basically MalcolmRobb’s fork plus a few small tweaks. It’s not actively developed beyond what’s needed to support piaware releases (e.g. mlat awareness recently).
Development on dump1090-mutability is basically limited by my (lack of) free time at the moment, but that’s where new stuff will happen when it does.
what i learned (correct me if false) is that antirez made a masterstroke over his christmas hollidays by inventing dump1090. for him it was just a one time hobby project. then malcolm robb added some features like beast support etc.
what i found nowhere was - what are the differences/improvements mutabilitiy has over antirez and malcolmrobb fork ???
Hi Tom,
Your question is a bit like asking “What’s the difference between Windows 95 and Windows 10?” Too many differences to list but they both do a similar job.
I’d always go for whatever version is being actively developed. Mutability all the way.
oliver thanx for reply. ok i looked through all the stuff - and as you wrote - some is not self-explanatory. but i can see there are lots of bug-fixes and improvements here and there.
can you tell me just in a few words:
has mutabilty last version same or better stability than malcolmrobs?
compared in the same average environment - how many percent ads-b reliable data higher output would you guess/measure?
in the evening i’ll see over this ‘collectd thing’ in depth. as you already did this one to one testing - what is your end-result?
how big are the differences of the different dump1090 and rtl-sdr versions in percent estimated?
regarding the antenna question - my original site lives on the attic under the roof - not really perfect but the output is not too bad - about 5,000 aircrafts and 250,000 positions per day - see picture. now i ordered a second antenna and a cheap flagpole to test how much better the results would be if i mount the antenna on top of the roof. after antenna-testing i can easily use the pole to hoist up a ‘stop merkel’ flag at my house …
kind regards
tom
p.s. wrote this already in another post - on sunday i made a diagram antenna reach of my site
puuuh - can’t say if there are others in my neighborhood - as i live in a very small village in the south of munich/bavaria/germany …
but i think it’s just luck - my house sits on top of a tiny hill above the village.
p.s. just looked in my stats - yesterday it were 5,634 aircrafts and 304,575 positions
Right now, you’re averaging 295,481 positions. The next highest feeder is 28 miles away which is averaging 240,957 positions. So, you’re doing well in your area.
For successful feeding and MLAT enough version MalcolmRobb. It has support for MLAT. If you need the interface with the map drawing, it can also be enabled. But this is not the main task of dump1090 ! All interfaces, prettiness and convenience, all “usability” - only for the user! And all of them at the expense of performance and memory footprint. The size of the file after compiling dump1090 MalcormRobb from 151 to 230 KB depending on the version of gcc and compilation switches. Look at the size of compiled version of “mutability” - it fits in the all cache of your CPU. Look at the source code and you will be surprised how many additional checks and improvements it added. Compare the CPU load dump1090 process with the version of “mutability” and MalcolmRobb. Here hinted about compare Win9x and Win10 - absolutely agree. If You have cool quad core CPU and gigabytes of memory - put what you want. The work will be. On a 512MB RaspberryPi I ran into packet loss and complaints of constant excess of 90% CPU usage in the user interface FlightAware. Don’t need on a weak hardware with a single-core processor to put demanding applications. I don’t want to be tied to broadcasting only FA and FR24, to have packet loss due to restrictions on height of flight, introduced in version “mutability”. Soon I’ll add the functionality in version MalcolmRobb or go the way more code optimization. Now I feeding with MLAT for FA and FR24 on the old hardware of the RPi and there is a distribution on 3 remote private servers when the overall system load is not more than 54% at htop.
