I just downloaded the PiAware 3.8.1 image, configured (LAN DHCP) and installed in my Raspberry PI3b+. RX is a poor USB dongle, antenna is an outside discone. All seem to be OK up and running but till now, no planes as been acquired … very poor traffic.
The very same setup (discone + pi3b+ SDRPlay RSP2 + dump1090) installed and build on a standard Raspian image do work well … except few planes every day. VirtualRadar is run on a different Win7 machine.
Question: is it possible to replace RX from poor USB stick to more performant SDRPlay Hardware ? How to find detailed descriptions ? There are tons of info on internet but not very usefull.
Air traffic is much lower than normal at the moment due to the coronavirus pandemic.Depending on where you are, you may not be seeing any traffic at all sometimes.
A discone is not an ideal antenna for receiving ads-b - ideally you want one designed for 1090MHz. A decent quality rtl dongle with an appropriate outdoor antenna will give good performance, especially if you use a filtered pre-amp. If you are going to spend money improving your reception, then a good antenna is a much better investment than a better receiver initially.
I wouldn’t recommend an SDRPlay if it’s going to be used as a dedicated receiver for ads-b - an airspy mini and pre-amp would likely give you better performance as the airspy decoder is working very well now and can take full advantage of the hardware.