HOWTO: Airspy mini and Airspy R2: Piaware / dump1090-fa configuration

[janoskonya]

Hi,

Most of the detection zone covered by my station (using R2 and cavity filter) is quite busy in summer (near Budapest) but the message rate still has a daily peak of “only” around 2400-2500 - rarely reaching 2600.

In addition to the amount of traffic and the reception quality of the station, some settings can also result in extra data packets, although their real value may be questionable.

I try to feed a clean data stream to the service providers, using a stricter “whitelist_threshold” (10) and the “non_crc_preamble_filter” is also used normally, in the range of 5-8. By increasing the latter value, the number of packets can be increased somewhat further, but they may contain an increasing number of erroneous data.

In my opinion, it is not worth prioritizing the message rate. Usability is a greater value than the quantity itself. I think.

Regards,
Janos

[foxhunter]

@janoskonya

In my opinion, it is not worth prioritizing the message rate

That’s what i said. I was just curious

[wiedehopf]

You have terrain limitations yes?
Others see more aircraft thus higher message rates.

It also depends on how much radar interrogation is going on.
Which is varied based on frequency congestion.
So more planes in the air means the Eurocontrol will lower interrogation rates on their radar sites i believe.
Thus you can have a high message rate that doesn’t really go up when there are more planes.

[foxhunter]

@wiedehopf

Why are you even surprised with your terrain limitations

Not really surprised, just asking…
thanks for clarification

[CraigWoodThomas]

FYI…My message rate runs between 2500 and 3000 when I am tracking near to 500 aircraft. That’s peak here.

[wiedehopf]

@foxhunter

Not really surprised, just asking…

See the revised post above.

There was a long thread about Adsbcompare – compare.sh script but i can’t find it.
That was discussing message rates more extensively.
But just a couple of those graphs give some info on the relationship.

Interestingly the position rate stagnates even more than the message rate.
Probably frequestion congestion (overlapping messages) affecting the longer messages more than the shorter messages.

[LawrenceHill]

@wiedehopf

There was a long thread about Adsbcompare – compare.sh script but i can’t find it.
That was discussing message rates more extensively.

I think it was in this thread:

Signal Strength Heatmap

This isn’t really directly related to the previous plotting script, but this thread is a bit of a dumping ground for my stuff so it’s going here. I quite like the hourly received reports plot on the FA stats page but it only shows the previous week: [image] I wanted something that covered a bit longer and in a bit more detail, so I decided to try and make something that did that. This uses data that is already collected and stored by graphs1090 so doesn’t require any other services running to…

[wiedehopf]

@LawrenceHill

was in this thread:

I don’t think so, it had way more graphs like this one:

[caius]

Might be this one: Message rate vs. aircraft seen

[foxhunter]

Thanks @wiedehopf for the edited reply, makes totally sense and @caius for the link
Will read through it. Just for my understanding, not really an issue

Yes, my terrain is limited partially in some directions, especially in these, they are significant lower than my max range:

[wiedehopf]

@foxhunter

significant lower than my max range:

You are terrain limited in all directions, no?
Well all stations are terrain limited but i’m comparing to a reasonable flat terrain which will get you a range around 240 nmi.

[foxhunter]

More or less, yes. My max range to the south (Switzerland) is around 180 Nm which i do not reach in any other direction (apart from some single aircraft)

[prog]

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[dirkhh]

Thank you for that
Having been one struggling with the US distributor I’m happy to hear this.
Where can I place an order to show my appreciation?

[prog]

The official .com website, as usual.

[jimMerk2]

Have a pretty basic question regarding using the AirSpy device. AirSpy code is doing the demod and decoding of ads-b signals on an RPi. But dump1090-fa or readsb is still running (depending on which is installed). What are they doing in that case?

Also supposedly the AirSpy device can be used in “native mode” where it feeds IQ data to dump1090-fa or readsb. Does anyone use that mode or is it not particularly worthwhile?

[wiedehopf]

@jimMerk2

What are they doing in that case?

Providing json data for the webinterface, providing SBS format, readsb can do a lot more if you want it to.

If you just want beast data, airspy_adsb is sufficient.

@jimMerk2

Does anyone use that mode or is it not particularly worthwhile?

It’s not good but i haven’t recently checked.
At least for readsb that would be via soapy and if it works at all ….

There was some higher sampling rate fork for dump1090-fa and airspy but don’t know how good it was.

Any issue with airspy_adsb? (besides not being open source)

[jimMerk2]

@wiedehopf

Any issue with airspy_adsb? (besides not being open source)

No not really, just curious.

Thanks for the info.

[remotepi]

I have a problem trying to get an Airspy running on a new Raspberry Pi5 with a fresh install of PiAware (SD Card) 10.2.

I have been running my Airspy on a PI4 for years no issue, when I run Wiedehopf’s script on the new PI5, Flightaware cannot see my Airspy at all.

I ran his check script sudo journalctl -e -u airspy_adsb and below is the result:-

Aug 29 16:58:14 piaware systemd[1]: Started airspy_adsb.service - Airspy ADS-B receiver.
Aug 29 16:58:14 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: airspy_adsb v2.2-RC31
Aug 29 16:58:14 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Listening for beast clients on port 47787
Aug 29 16:58:14 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Acquired Airspy device with serial 522861C82D5D1407
Aug 29 16:58:14 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Decoding started at 12 MSPS (Gain: auto; CPU target: 85 %)
Aug 29 16:58:15 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client connected to 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:15 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client disconnected from 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:28 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client connected to 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:28 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client disconnected from 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:41 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client connected to 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:41 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client disconnected from 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:54 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client connected to 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)
Aug 29 16:58:54 piaware airspy_adsb[1522]: Push client disconnected from 127.0.0.1:30004 (beast)

If I swap in an old Flightaware pro dongle, the Flightaware site starts running and works fine.

I am not in any way good with Linux, it looks like the script isn’t modifying the latest SD card Image and its still running like a default install.

Has anyone had this issue?

cheers Andy

[wiedehopf]

@remotepi

If I swap in an old Flightaware pro dongle, the Flightaware site starts running and works fine.

sudo piaware-config

What is the output for this?

Really i’d recommend just using adsb.im as an image.
I’m not sure i’m keen on keeping up with random piaware sd-card changes.
Suppose i might still do that but regardless.