How to setup the SDR for maximum and close range? Impossible?

@SoNic67
Would be interessting…pls tell if you manage to have two sticks running at 1090mhz on one rpi!
Maybe its Impossible to have two instances of dump1090 but it could be possible to run dump1090 and dump1090-fa or a different tool with another name. And maybe the driver should have another name as well.

1 Like

May be dump1090 and ModeSDeco2 running simultaneously on same PI using two dongles?

I will try that. But how to configure the both regarding feeder and mlat and so on…I really like the view the and mlat data in dump mutability.
It should help the guy in the tower as well to have a better control of the airtraffic pattern… therefore mlat would be helpfull

Mlat is not always right, I would not try to use that for actual ATC purposes.

Aren’t you trying to do to many things at once with one Pi? The simplest thing would be to set up two PIs, one for “production”, one to try out things and see if you find a workable solution for your initial problem.

@biekerc
Of course is mlat not always right due to calculation but its better to have nothing due to missing location data in adsb signal.
And most of the microlight aviation has no GNSS data.
If one rpi would be feasible I’d prefer this way.
Two rpi would be definitely too easy :grinning:

Dual Receiver on Piaware SD Card image (Jessie)/RPi Model2

  1. First step was to serialize the Dongles. Assigned serial number 00000000 to one Dongle (for dump1090-fa), and 00001001 to other Dongle (for ModeSDeco2).
    Put Stickers with their assigned Serial Numbers on both Dongles.

    How to Change Serial Number of Dongle - ADSB 1090 + UAT 978 Dongles Plugged Into Same Pi

    .

  2. Downloaded modesdeco2_rpi2-3_20170127.tgz from ModeSDecoder2 site on Windows computer, then uploaded to DropBox

  3. Plugged both Dongles in Pi and rebooted Pi

  4. Started installation process

sudo mkdir msd2

#Downloaded file from DropBox to newly created directory msd2
sudo wget -O msd2/modesdeco2_rpi2-3_20170127.tgz  "https://www.dropbox.com/s/dwhvl5n8pud2urq/modesdeco2_rpi2-3_20170127.tgz?dl=1"    

#moved into directory where downloaded file is saved
cd msd2

#Unzipped downloaded file
sudo tar xvzf modesdeco2_rpi2-3_20170127.tgz

#Created a blank file
sudo nano msd2.sh

Copy-pasted following text into blank file msd2.sh
(replace XX.XXXX:YY.YYYY by your actual Latitude & Longitude)

/home/pi/msd2/modesdeco2 \
 --device-serial 1001 \
 --gain 49.6 \
 --freq-correction 62 \
 --location XX.XXXX:YY.YYYY \
 --web 8088 \
 --metric \

Saved File.

Made file msd2.sh executable

sudo chmod +x msd2.sh

To Automatically start ModeSDeco2 at boot/reboot:

Open file rc.local for editing
sudo nano /etc/rc.local

Add following line just above the last, single-worded line (i.e. above exit0)
/home/pi/msd2/msd2.sh &
Save (Ctrl+o) and close file (Ctrl+x)

Rebooted RPi
sudo reboot

Both the dump1090-fa and ModeSDeco2 started, each one using its designated Dongle. ModeSDeco2 will automatically start at Boot / Reboot.

Dump1090-fa Map

.

ModeSDeco2 Map

2 Likes

Nice.
Thanks for the Support. I will try that.

CPU usage RPi Model 2:
2 ProSticks in one RPI.
One Dongle serial #00000000 (dump1090-fa), second Dongle serial #00001001 (modeSDeco2)
(Please see my post above)

ModeSDeco2 = 63.5% :rage:
dump1090-fa = 25.5%
fa-mlat-client 1.0%
modeSMixer2 = 0.7%
piaware = 0.7%
mlat-client (adsbexchange) = 0.7%

ModeSDeco2%20CPU%20usage%20very%20high

I have to admit that I was not able to get modesdeco running yesterday. Maybe its because dump1090 mutability and stats is already running in this image but modesdeco was not reachable at 8088. But the heavy CPU load makes me wonder anyway If this way is best. Is Modesdeco causing this high load as well when running alone?

@abcd567
BTW many thanks for your constant input in this forum. I guess without your support and time this would be a lot more frustrating!
Attached three pictures from my collectd stats. My memory keeps on rising - is this going to be a problem?

@fk9
The gradual increase in disk usage may be due to log files. Delete /var/log/piaware.log, var/log/fr24feed.log, /var/log/dump1090-fa (or mutab).log, /var/log/pfclient/pfclient*, and also files with .1, .2 etc at the end. After deleting these log files, reboot so that fresh blank copies of these files are created by system.

Did you choose yes to “advance options” when installing web portal/graphs? This option also saves lot of data on disk and fills it up.

@abcd567
Thanks, I´ll monitor that. No I did not choose yes afaik. The sd card is 32gb so enough space but I´m afraid that the ram will be insufficient.

Well, about half of the1Gb RAM is unused right now, and most of it is some form of Cache, basically the os took the opportunity of free RAM to put things there to improve performance. So you should be ok.

I was going to jump on that solution, but with modesdeco2 having such a high usage…

May be something wrong with my install. It is unbelieveable that modeSDeco2 has such a high CPU usage, else it would have been reported in radarspotter’s forum.

It is better few others also try. It takes less than half an hour including serialization of two dongles.

If you find in your install also it has a very high cpu usage, you can delete it by deleting its folder msd2 and deletimg startup entry in /etc/rc.local.

tried it again with a fresh raspian stretch and itś still not working. Dump-fa is running but modesdeco2 is not working or reachable at :8088

  1. Give command top, and see if it is running.

  2. The wget command in my post is for ModeSDeco2 for Jessie. I used it on Piaware SD Card image which is Jessie. Possibly it failed because you used it on Stretch.

  3. I checked the download site:
    http://xdeco.org/?page_id=30

    From this site I have downloaded ModeSDeco2 .tgz file to Windows Desktop, then uploaded to Dropbox, and finally used wget command to download from Dropbox to RPi.

    They have not yet released version fo Stretch.
    .
    25

The site http://xdeco.org/?page_id=30 is decieving. As the names ModeSDeco2 and ModeSMixer2 resemble so much, couple of years ago when I visited this site to download Decoder for Windows, I downloaded Mixer for Windows, and was struggling for hours to make it work as Decoder before finally discovering I have downloaded Mixer. :frowning:

OK, so am I right that Modesdeco will not work with rasp stretch now?
I will try it with jessie, lets see.
Thanks anyway for your support.
Btw is there a simple way to remove dump1090 mutability and Install dump-fa or is it better to Install -fa in a new Image?
I checked -fa yesterday and I like it more. The altitude filter and showing Infos by mouse-over is much more convenient for our flightcontroller.
An additional rainradar layer for Europe would be nice. Are the mlat data the same as I have in dump mutability? These are quite good in my area.

There are two ways to change mutability to fa:

(1) Keep the dump1090-mutability, but replace its two-clock map by SkyView map of dump1090-fa

(2) Remove completely dump1090-mutability, and in its place install dump1090-fa

Both these methods are given here as options (a) and (b):

TWEAKS >> Tweak-2

NOTE:
In option (b), which is for completely removing dump1090-mutability, there are two commands given, one is --remove, second is --purge. Actually only one of these is required, and --purge is better. If you give both, the first one will work, next wont. Better do not use --remove command, and give only --purge command.