Multilateration (MLAT) Beta

[dschaper]

@sjacket99

I have a question. I know this is probably a dumb question. How do I know or check if Mlat is working? I am running a Pi with Dump1090-Mut. When I bring up the map to see the dump running on the right side, it says V1.14.

Thanks.

The tally/grid board highlights MLAT targets with a blue background (along with the white and green backgrounds for no position and co-ordinate positions). Also when you select one of those targets, you’ll see MLAT in the flight data breakdown.

[sjacket99]

@dschaper

@sjacket99

I have a question. I know this is probably a dumb question. How do I know or check if Mlat is working? I am running a Pi with Dump1090-Mut. When I bring up the map to see the dump running on the right side, it says V1.14.

Thanks.

The tally/grid board highlights MLAT targets with a blue background (along with the white and green backgrounds for no position and co-ordinate positions). Also when you select one of those targets, you’ll see MLAT in the flight data breakdown.

Ok. Thanks for the reply. I never seen a blue line on the right side. I have a lot of white and green, but no blue.

[dschaper]

@sjacket99

@dschaper

The tally/grid board highlights MLAT targets with a blue background (along with the white and green backgrounds for no position and co-ordinate positions). Also when you select one of those targets, you’ll see MLAT in the flight data breakdown.

Ok. Thanks for the reply. I never seen a blue line on the right side. I have a lot of white and green, but no blue.

Which PiAware are you running? That’s the key program that sends back the mlat data for dump1090-m to display.

[mgunther]

Also, I believe you need to run dump1090-mutability v1.15~dev OR the FA-supplied dump1090 to be able to see the blue lines. dump1090-mutability v1.15 has not been released yet as a pre-built package but you can build it yourself from source. See post177419.html#p177419 on how to do that.

[obj]

piaware will also log the rate of mlat results it’s receiving periodically to /tmp/piaware.out, which is another way to check if you’re not running a dump1090 that highlights them.

[sjacket99]

I got it working. Thanks everyone for the help.

[obj]

Doing some work on the server side at the moment which may impact returning results to receivers. If you seem to have stopped receiving results, try restarting piaware, that should fix it.

[sjacket99]

@obj

Doing some work on the server side at the moment which may impact returning results to receivers. If you seem to have stopped receiving results, try restarting piaware, that should fix it.

Had to that this morning. Working ok now. Thanks for the heads up Obj…

[K4AA]

OBJ: no longer receiving MLAT birds. Restarted piaware etc. Joe K4AA

[obj]

You may need to restart it a couple of times (basically only one of the two servers that piaware connects to are currently returning results, you need to end up connected to the right one, and it’s a bit random which one you get each time)

[K4AA]

OBJ: OK 4th reboot hit the right server. Thanks . . .Joe K4AA

[jimcander]

@dschaper

@sjacket99

I have a question. I know this is probably a dumb question. How do I know or check if Mlat is working? I am running a Pi with Dump1090-Mut. When I bring up the map to see the dump running on the right side, it says V1.14.

Thanks.

The tally/grid board highlights MLAT targets with a blue background (along with the white and green backgrounds for no position and co-ordinate positions). Also when you select one of those targets, you’ll see MLAT in the flight data breakdown.

Is this the display from the dump1090 output? Can someone post a screenshot as to what it should look like if you are display MLAT hits?

[obj]

@mgunther

My suggestion here is that when the age of the last know position reaches 60 seconds, the plane is removed from the map but kept in the list until it does not receive any messages at all and then ages out in the normal way.

This is done in dump1090-mutability now, it seems to work fairly well. If you select the plane from the table it’ll show the last position / track.

[toverfield]

@jimcander

Is this the display from the dump1090 output? Can someone post a screenshot as to what it should look like if you are display MLAT hits?

http://s21.postimg.org/cq0rok2rr/Screen_Shot_1.jpg

[jimcander]

@toverfield

@jimcander

Is this the display from the dump1090 output? Can someone post a screenshot as to what it should look like if you are display MLAT hits?

http://s21.postimg.org/cq0rok2rr/Screen_Shot_1.jpg

So I see white, grey and bluish-green… is the bluish-green MLAT?

[dschaper]

@jimcander

So I see white, grey and bluish-green… is the bluish-green MLAT?

Yes, the blues are MLAT and in the information breakout at the top there is MLAT text info also.

[mgunther]

@obj

@mgunther

My suggestion here is that when the age of the last know position reaches 60 seconds, the plane is removed from the map but kept in the list until it does not receive any messages at all and then ages out in the normal way.

This is done in dump1090-mutability now, it seems to work fairly well. If you select the plane from the table it’ll show the last position / track.

Great! Updated and checking, but currently no MLAT planes near me… perhaps tomorrow.

[toverfield]

@jimcander

So I see white, grey and bluish-green… is the bluish-green MLAT?

I see that I changed the colors a bit in /usr/share/dump1090/public_html/config.js

Here are the stock colors:

Airplane icon       Right side listing    Represents
-----------         --------------        --------
White               Grey                  Currently selected
Grey                Pale Green            Mode-S w/ ADS-B position 
Blue/grey           Pale Blue             Mode-S w/ MLAT position        
Not shown           White                 Mode-S without position

I changed the airplane icons to more closely resemble the colors in the right-side listing.

[mgunther]

@mgunther

@obj

@mgunther

My suggestion here is that when the age of the last know position reaches 60 seconds, the plane is removed from the map but kept in the list until it does not receive any messages at all and then ages out in the normal way.

This is done in dump1090-mutability now, it seems to work fairly well. If you select the plane from the table it’ll show the last position / track.

Great! Updated and checking, but currently no MLAT planes near me… perhaps tomorrow.

Just to confirm: this worked fine for me!

[dbaker]

We’re announcing this publicly (via email to feeders, forums, etc) and it can now be discussed here: ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/multilateration-mlat-now-available-on-piaware-t35637.html