Multiple DVB-T receivers and dump1090

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Hello,

is there a possibility to have more than one USB DVB-T receiver on a piaware device and to collect all these information with one instance of dump1090? It would be nice to cover different sides of a house with different receivers.

Thanks for answering

Regards,

unknown2014

2

Not with one instance of dump1090, but you can run a instance per dongle, an extra “hub” instance in --net-only mode, and feed data from the receivers to the hub with netcat.

If you have >1 instance of dump1090 on the same machine, you’ll want to configure non-default ports on each instance so they don’t collide.

The receiving dump1090s don’t necessarily need to be on the same machine. I use this sort of setup with two antennas and two Pis.

3

thanks,

can the “hub” instance send data to flightaware and so on.

4

Yes, that’s how I have mine set up. The only thing to watch out for is that piaware will feed from whatever is providing data on local port 30005 (or 10001 if you have a version with FATSV support) - so make sure it’s the hub instance that’s on that port.

5

the summary of all local sources can also be seen on a local website?

6

Yes. The hub dump1090 does basically everything a regular dump1090 does - it can generate the webmap or feed to other sources - it just gets its data indirectly from the receivers rather than directly from a RTLSDR dongle.

7

is the RaspberryPi (B+) able to serve up to four DVB-T USB devices with power (power supply with 2000 mA) or do I need an active USB hub?

8

I’ve run 2 and it was OK. 4 might be pushing it - I think they take a few 100mA each. You are almost certainly going to run out of CPU trying to run 4 copies of dump1090 though.

Edit: looks like the B+ is limited to 600mA total USB output by default (though apparently it can be increased to 1.2A) - 600mA is not enough for 4 dongles, I’ve seen ~300mA/dongle quoted elsewhere.

9

I’ve run a Wi-Fi dongle and an SDR on the B+ with no issues. More than two SDRs is going to push it – you want to go to a powered USB hub, which can introduce noise issues, but overcomes the power limitations.

cheers–

bob k6rtm

10

Raspberry Pi 2 B with 6 times more CPU oomph and twice as much memory has gone on sale (at the same price as the old) - that should be able to supply the compute resource for four dongles, but you might need to run at least some of the dongles via a powered USB hub - just for the power requirement.

11

I’m on the waiting list at Adafruit – probably be a month or more (which is the good news, for them – I expect a lot of orders and a backlog)

bob k6rtm

12

Mine is running about 90mA idle and ~260mA under load.

13

How do you measure it?

14

What netcat command do you use? I have to connect e.g. localport 31005 to 30005.

15 

nc -d localhost 31005 | nc -q1 localhost 30004
16

With an inline ammeter.

17

Okay, I’m still stupid with the command interface of the raspberry pi. (I used to be pretty handy with DOS though!)

I have raspbian running dump1090 and piaware with 1 rtl-sdr dongle to a CI-105 1/4 wave transponder antenna (perks of being an avionics installer).

I want to use my other rtl-sdr dongle to expand my coverage directionally with a home brew biquad.

What do I do?

I figure I need to install another instance of dump1090, configure it to use the new dongle specifically, and send it’s data to the original instance of dump1090. The original dump1090 then needs to be setup to receive the data from the new dump1090. Or am I completely off?

I should really get a Raspbian for Dummies book or something.

18

Hello

i have same problem, faup1090 after Updates no start.

till new Update

my private

make a # comment by dume0190-mutability in conf /etc/default8dump1090-mutability before FSV 10001

restart dump1090-mutability

nohup faup1090 &

and i can send

19

You’re basically right.

You don’t need to install a new copy of dump1090, you can reuse the existing install. You do need to configure it to run it a second time, though. Here’s an approximate outline:

  1. Arrange to run a second copy with different command-line arguments. This will usually involve taking a copy of the existing init.d script and modifying it. The different arguments you will need are:

–device-index to specify which of the two dongles to use (it’s best to put this on both copies and identify them by serial number; you can set the serial number with rtl_eeprom)

One of the copies will need a bunch of extra arguments to change/disable the network ports it uses, so they don’t conflict with the other copy, something like: --net-bo-port 31005 --net-bi-port 0 --net-ro-port 0 --net-ri-port 0 --net-sbs-port 0 --net-http-port 0 (this moves the Beast output port to port 31005, and disables the other ports)

  1. Arrange for a netcat tunnel between the two instances. I use a script like this. You are sending from “–net-bo-port” of one instance to the “–net-bi-port” on the other:


#!/bin/sh
while :
do
  nc -d localhost 31005 | nc -q1 localhost 30004
  sleep 15
done
  1. Arrange for everything to be started on boot (not enough space in this margin to explain)
20

Alright, thanks for the info. I’ll do a bit more research and antenna building and go from there.

Again, thank you