I could use a Coach

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
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Hey all,

I thought long and hard about posting this (and feeling dumb for it), but here I am.
I reckon I’ll either get some help or not, but I’m asking.

I originally struggled settting up my first ADS-B receiver (978) for several reasons…

  1. I’d never seen a RPi, much less tried to set one up for anything.
  2. In spite of ultimately becoming a Comm/Inst/CFI, I barely made it out of high school, and found out at 48 years old, (70 now) that I was a FAS baby, and suffer a from a few of the handicaps and learning disabilities that come with that condition.
  3. Some terms that the majority of posters here understand easily, send me into a confusion of terms…‘sudo’ ‘dump’ and ‘script’ being among them.
  4. One of the USB/micro cables FA sent me with the 978 kit was bad from the jump, and any attmpts to seek help from Tech were often met with silence. Only when a kind FA engineer reached out to ask why my receiver wasn’t sending data to FA after 4 months online, was he able to walk me through the steps to diagnose and fix the issue.
    I attempted to contact this engineer recently to see if he could assist me again, but didn’t receive a reply.

I now have stable 1090 & 978 receivers at the small dirt Colorado airport (5V4) I live on, but would like to take it a step or two further. (But are too scared to mess with them)

Here are my current goals…

  1. Combine the 978 & 1090 to one page. I know it’s possible, and have read every word regarding the subject on these forums, but it ends up being like the IRS Tax Code to me…total confusion.
  2. Work on the ‘Gain’ settings for my 1090 receiver. When a 1090 target approaches my airport, I can see it on the map until it’s about 3 miles away inbound, and then it appears again once it’s 3-ish miles past me. It still shows the N number and some of the data on the list, but may be missing speed or altitude until far enough away.
    I’ve read extensively on ‘gain’ in the forum, but once again, it’s so far over my head, that I soon spin off into confusion once more.

If anyone has the time (I do and promise to be a good student), to help walk me though these setup issues, I will be so very grateful.
Pointing to posts in the forum will not help in my case, and I’m asking for a little ‘hand holding’ to work my way to success.
If you think you could help me with this, in an effort to not clog up the forum, just contact me directly through email…my FA name at A O L will work.

Thanks for reading,

J

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J,

  1. at the moment it is not easy to combine 978 and 1090 into one page. You can view this on your Skyaware anywhere page ADS-B Flight Tracking - FlightAware

For 2., it looks like your receiver is being overloaded. Try Dropping the 1090 gain 10 or 15 settings. Dongles like the airspy have a greater dynamic range, so can cater for wider variations in signal levels.

I don’t use the rtl-sdr for 1090(I have airspys, Mode S beasts, radarcape and airsquitter) so bare with me. I only use the rtl-sdr for 978 (only because I never managed to get the airspy to work).

Run this command to see your current settings(save the screen or values to a text file so you can revert to them later)
sudo piaware-config --showall

then run
sudo piaware-config rtlsdr-gain 40

restart piaware
sudo piaware-config -restart

Jon

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Jon,

Thanks so much for your quick response. God bless you for trying.

I recognise the words you wrote as belonging to the English language, but unfortunately for me, that’s all I got from it.

I have no clue what an airspy is, I’m using what FA sent me in their kits.

J

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We all started out where you are now. Some things worked, and we were not sure why and some never wanted to behave. It is a learning experience, and at 75 myself, still learning, experimenting, and sometimes even having fun with this stuff.

Linux and the predecessor Unix were written by geeky guys like myself. Yea, I have been using Unix since early '80’s and used Unix/Linux before it escaped into the world. That was some of my military satellite time. Anyway, there are lots of strange commands that make little sense but are really helpful when you are trying to get something to work. Linux is free, works reliably, adapts well to most any hardware, easily programmed and did I mention it is FREE!

SUDO: When you and I log into our pi systems, we are a user, usually just named “pi”. To get answers to some problems, we need to invoke a higher level user named “root”. Well, root is the superuser, and because doing things as superuser can totally mess up a system, there is a way the regular user pi can execute a program at the high level of root. That is the purpose of “sudo” and kind of short cut for “Super User Do” something. This is a bit over-simplifying things, but good for now. And generally commands you and I use in Windows do not work at all in Linux. Gotta admit, each has advantages and disadvantages.

I suspect you already have one of the beginning books about using Linux, if not, they do help. Linux is a file based system using separate directories to hold the thousands of files and provide a bit of order. The top level is also called root and has a label “/”. You move around the levels using a command “cd” for change directory. Just might be the only command that makes sense. To see what files are in a directory, use “ls”. ls has lots of options you can use, see your Intro to Linux book above. The Linux For Dummies book is pretty good as a starter.

The contents of the files contain the programs and some files almost look like english and tell the program files how and what to do. You will need one of the books because linux files each have permissions, and you have to be careful of what files you touch and change.

Fortunately, you can usually recover by undoing whatever you changed. Just do not try to put sudo in front of every command, I had a lieutenant who thought he knew anything so when he did his "sudo rm -r /* " command and deleted ALL the files on the system, he got to also learn how to to a total install of the entire operating system. Those were the days before image files or CD’s. And no, I was not that lieutenant, though I did some dumb things myself at times. It happens.

Anyway, you got this. If it were simple, anyone could do it. You will do well, learning the steps and making your system the best it can be for yourself. Hang in and have fun with this hobby. There are good people here and we were all novices at the start.
Gene

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Gene, I like your grass roots level intro to the Linux system that I’m sure he will find useful, but I have to wonder if he knows how to use Putty as a basic terminal to log into his Rpi with that “Pi” user? I too struggled in his shoes a year ago and the very basics were not in reach for me as it appears to be the case for him. Don’t want to interfere with your reply, just think he may need the very basics to get off the ground.

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One of my coaches, ladies and gents.

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And here all along, I thought Fortran IV was cool.

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Lets see here, started Fortran II in 1966, later in college, Basic on IBM & Cobol,. Fortran IV in military satellite ground station command and control with Data General 16 bit Assembly to control 9600 baud modems when at home the best we had was 110 baud. The trail gets a bit crazy after that.

No problem for Multiple Coaches here. If you have an idea or suggestion, write it up. This thread will likely be referenced by many newcomers over the next several years. I have learned so much from the discussions, photos, and ideas here. Pass it on.

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Thanks for taking the time to reply Gene. Although your response was at a very basic level regarding Linux and how it’s files are modified, I’m still lost…for now.

I’ll take your good advice about getting ahold of a Linux book, and only hope I’m able to find “Linux for the Brain Damaged.”

I’ll come back and reply again if I’m able to make any headway. Thanks again!

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You are not giving up. We all admire that.

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CWT.
Thanks for chiming in!!
I was taught how to use Putty by the FA engineer who reached out to me last year.
He explained in basic detail how to use Putty to access the RPi and exactly what changes I needed to make to the files.
I have Putty’d in a few times since then, but only to look. I’m concerned a comma or period in the wrong spot could shut me down again, and I don’t want to do that!
J

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Weren’t 9600 baud rates like, really fast?

:smile:

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You have a lot of questions, and you are getting some help already. So I am not going to try to answer everything, but I would like to try to help simplify one concept.

For a moment, envision your antenna as a big microphone outside. “Gain” is the volume control. If you want to “hear” planes that are far away, you can “turn up the volume” (increase gain). But once you do that, everything the microphone picks up will be loud. And the closer the plane gets to you and your microphone, the louder it will get - until it is so loud that it drowns out all other sounds. But if you leave the volume low, you will not “hear” the distant planes as well.

This is greatly simplified, but that’s how your PiAware and antenna interact. If your gain is turned up to the max so that it can “see” the most distant planes, a nearby plane can overwhelm the system with its broadcast and cause the system to not see it at all.

Most of us who are not using the AirSpy receivers mentioned above have to find a balance between best distance reception and best plane count. There is no one “right” answer, the “best” gain setting will require some experimentation and some value judgments on your part. Terrain can be a limiting factor, as can electromagnetic interference.

Hope that shines some light!

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JAF! THANK YOU SIR!!

I think you understand me!!

“Greatly simplified” is what it’s going to take for me to pull this off.

Keep it coming please…in baby steps if you have the time.

J

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This happened with me also when I first encountered Linux in 2015 :slightly_smiling_face:

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In the early days of before Unix and Linux, students and users often tried to see if they could crash the operating systems. Very annoying to everyone else, but sadly, there will always be people like that, looking for the easy way to destroy instead of building and creating.

The developers of Unix in the early 70’s knew their early system could crash without help from the users, and left the commands to crash the system available. It was easy to do. When someone did crash it, the rest of the users used peer pressure to censure and punish those causing the crashes. The goal was how long can we all keep this working. Change the goals and the mindset changed. Linux inherited this philosophy.

Everyone became coaches for new users. We all learned and grew. And we all run into situations where the “I didn’t know that would happen, oops” happens even today. Fortunately, it only affects ourselves most of the time, and we become more careful. It will happen to all of us over time. Have fun, learn, grow, coach, and prosper. If you are not having fun in your job or life, perhaps you need a little change to get back on track.

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J, glad to hear you are using the Putty terminal to access your RPi. You don’t have to be too concerned about having to create your own command line strings here because the experienced users are very generous with providing cut and paste command lines that you can use for very specific purposes. These folks don’t send you crash commands.
I am wondering if you are familiar with “graphs1090”? If so, have you already loaded them on your system and are using them to monitor the provided graphic parameters? There is a cookie cutter command line for the install of those if you are not already there.

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CWT,

I’ve seen the ‘graphs1090’ referenced in the forums, but didn’t understand how it was installed or exactly what benefit I may get from using it.
If I had the command line, I would have no clue where it goes.
The FA engineer who helped me last year was very patient with me, when for three days I tried to add ‘ssh’ to my SD card in the wrong place.
Once he had that worked out, I was able to Putty right on in.
J

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Yes, I recall having to work through getting that ‘ssh’ instance in to my config file so that it would accept the putty terminal login. One step at a time and before you know it you can pass along a pointer or two. The 1090 graphs are extremely helpful with you being able to visualize the effects of changes you might make in antenna height or gain of the receiver when you get the proper pieces in place to be changing that with ease. Antenna height and gain are very important parameters in my opinion. Let’s see if I can round up that link for you that will allow you to download that 1090graphs capability. It’s rather quite simple to execute. You just make a putty terminal connection and copy and paste the command line that works like a charm. Someone else may provide that link before I get to digging it up and i welcome them to please do so if they are so inclined. Lots of knowledgeable and helpful people here! Cheers.

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Graphs1090 wil give you a visual insight in how well the receiver is performing.
This will enable you to correct some settings in order to improve the reception of your setup.

In order to install graphs1090 you have to take the following steps:

  • Open a Putty session towards your system.
    Copy the following line via the Ctrl + C buttons from your screen into the Putty session
sudo bash -c "$(curl -L -o - https://github.com/wiedehopf/graphs1090/raw/master/install.sh)"

right-click inside the Putty session to paste the command there.
press enter to execute the command.
After the installation is complete it will tell you where to open the webbrowser to view the graphs1090 page.
it will take around 10 minutes to see the first results coming into that page.

In order to view what graphs1090 displays and what you can use it for visit the following page:

Scroll through it so you get an idea what you are installing.
If you have any questions then ask, most of us are here to help you to get this running for you.

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