Looking to possibly do two things, running PiAware and a RTL-SDR server from the same Raspberry Pi? I have a hardwired ethernet connection to my garage and adjoining 35’ TV tower with an Ambient Weather WS-900-IP (Wireless), XM, FM and UHF antennas mounted (RG-6). Just picked up my second PI (a used 2B) and would like to stream SDR back to my PC just for viewing / exploring along with sharing PiAware if possible? From what I’ve read that might take 300Mb of uploaded data / mo, well under my 1Tb data plan :). I have not purchased a SDR dongle yet, but was going to go generic from a US supplier since the FlightAware dongle is more dedicated to it’s app.
If this is a total no go, I may just install RTL-SDR on one SD card and PiAware on another and swap before dedicating to one or the other (or just get a 3rd PI).
Thanks. I did see another posting about using two dongles, but I think they were both being used for the running of dump1090. They increased the coverage for either side of their house.
Hopefully this will help. I use Virtual Radar Server on my Windows 10 pc. I have the ‘receiver’ set to my RaspberryPi’s IP address. I used the ‘wizard’ feature under ‘Options>Receiver’ to locate the correct port.
It seems to be working great so far. I just changed some of the settings on the webpage in my Chrome browser to be more aesthetically pleasing for my needs.
I forgot to mention, you can also re-broadcast your feed with Virtual Radar Server on the PC to other services if you so choose and you can set as many ‘receiver’ profiles as you’d like to listen on different ports of the RaspberryPi.
The short answer to your question is — yes, absolutely!
My team and I have built an open source application called PiLNK that does exactly what you’re describing, and more. PiLNK combines ADS-B flight tracking (working seamlessly alongside PiAware) with live VHF airband audio streaming, all running simultaneously on a single Raspberry Pi.
You’re right that getting a Pi to reliably recognise and run two RTL-SDR dongles at the same time can be tricky — it’s one of the core problems we tackled head-on during development. PiLNK was designed from the ground up to handle both receivers concurrently, and we’ve built a solution that makes the whole process straightforward.
I want to be clear that PiLNK is not a competitor to PiAware or any other flight tracking software — far from it. We believe different approaches foster innovation and bring more people into the flight tracking community. Everyone benefits when the ecosystem grows.
If you’re curious about what we’ve built, head over to pilnk.io for a look. We’re currently preparing for a closed beta and would love to have enthusiastic community members like yourself involved.
