Piaware and FlightRadar24 together

I have a single ADS-B Raspberry Pi receiver but want to share my data with both FA and FR24. I have FR24FEED working but PIAWARE won’t start by itself and when I start it i get the following:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo piaware-status
dump1090 is not running.
faup1090 is not running.
piaware is running.
no program appears to be listening for connections on port 30005.
no program appears to be listening for connections on port 10001.
piaware is NOT connected to port 10001.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.
got ‘couldn’t open socket: connection refused’
maybe dump1090 is NOT producing data on port 30005.
got ‘couldn’t open socket: connection refused’
maybe dump1090 is NOT producing data on port 10001.

Any insights would be welcomed.

Are you running dump1090? What other programs are you running for ADS-B? Is this for a RTL dongle plugged into your USB port?

I have just reconfigured everything, starting with the install of piaware. Then I installed the flightradar24 system. Now piaware runs fine, but flight radar won’t run.

It all comes down to which one I install first runs properly and the second doesn’t.

Tell me what commands to run to see what is running.

Yes, dump1090 is running and there is a DVBT dongle.

Can you try running


sudo netstat --program --protocol=inet --tcp --wide --all

…and see if dump1090 has a server socket open on port 30005?

On the theory that dump1090 is being invoked with some command line argument that is inhibiting serving beast-style messages on port 30005 I’d also like to see the output of…


ps auxww | grep dump1090

Thanks… -karl

What does this tell you?


pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo netstat --program --protocol=inet --tcp --wide --all
Active Internet connections (servers and established)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State       PID/Program name
tcp        0      0 *:8754                  *:*                     LISTEN      2050/fr24feed
tcp        0      0 *:30002                 *:*                     LISTEN      2050/fr24feed
tcp        0      0 *:30003                 *:*                     LISTEN      2050/fr24feed
tcp        0      0 *:ssh                   *:*                     LISTEN      2156/sshd
tcp        0      0 raspberrypi.home:45463  eyes.flightaware.com:1200 ESTABLISHED 2291/piaware
tcp        0    248 raspberrypi.home:ssh    Jeffs-MBP-5.home:52755  ESTABLISHED 2208/sshd: pi [priv


This one doesn’t work



pi@raspberrypi ~ $ cps auxww | grep dump1090
-bash: cps: command not found
pi@raspberrypi ~ $


It’s “ps” with no c.


i@raspberrypi ~ $ ps auxww | grep dump1090
root      2078 30.0  1.0  14764  4640 ?        Sl   00:16  24:09 /usr/lib/fr24/dump1090 --raw
pi        2526  1.0  0.1   3552   860 pts/0    S+   01:36   0:00 grep --color=auto dump1090
pi

Hi,

I needed to adjust both bs and raw to no in /etc/fr24feed.ini to be able to run piaware and fr24 together.

-Paavo

OK…just shut off bs and raw

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo piaware-status
dump1090 is running.
faup1090 is not running.
piaware is running.
no program appears to be listening for connections on port 30005.
no program appears to be listening for connections on port 10001.
piaware is NOT connected to port 10001.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.
got ‘couldn’t open socket: connection refused’
maybe dump1090 is NOT producing data on port 30005.
got ‘couldn’t open socket: connection refused’
maybe dump1090 is NOT producing data on port 10001.

I would guess that:

  1. you are not starting dump1090 yourself, you are expecting piaware or fr24feeder to start it for you;
  2. fr24feeder is starting antirez’s version of dump1090, not MalcolmRobb’s version;
  3. antirez’s version of dump1090 does not support the binary output format that piaware/faup1090 require

So you need to either start the right version of dump1090 yourself, or configure fr24feeder to start it for you.
(I think fr24feeder packages this under some other name - dump1090_mr?)

Ugh, I’ve looked at antirez’s version and you are correct that it doesn’t support the binary output option on port 30005 that we rely on. It would not be hard to add 30002 support to faup1090 although it’s more than just that, piaware would have to figure out what to do. Not impossible, just work.

There are so many good updates to Malcolm Robb’s version of dump1090 that people running antirez’s version (and great props to antirez for writing dump1090, and of course for redis) should IMO upgrade. Nonetheless we’ve also already committed to being able to talk to a dump1090 that’s not on the localhost in some not too distant future.

good info.I noticed a file called mr-dump1090 in /usr/lib/fr24. Once again, not being a Linux guru, I don’t know what to configure to stop using the wrong one and start using the right one.

Hi,

path=“/usr/lib/fr24/mr-dump1090” in /etc/fr24feed.ini

You might want to put something to procargs, see othr topics in this forum.

Here is my complete /etc/fr24feed.ini (although I’m not using this any more, running the stand-alone binary as non-root now)


receiver="dvbt-mr"
fr24key="thisismine"
path="/usr/lib/fr24/mr-dump1090"
bs="no"
raw="no"
logmode="2"
procargs="--net --fix --stats-every 3600 --modeac --phase-enhance"

Maybe something like this would work for you?

  • modify /etc/fr24feed.ini to use MR-version of the dump1090, and put in any extra params (procargs) you want/need
  • sudo service fadump1090.sh stop
  • sudo service fr24feed restart
  • sudo service piaware restart

If that works, you can consider removing (sudo apt-get --purge remove dump1090) or at least disabling (sudo update-rc.d fadump1090.sh disable) the FA-vesion package/service so that it will not conflict with the MR-vesion of the dump1090 that is run by fr24feed.

Please report the results, there might be others who are interested in reporting to FlightAware and some other service.

-Paavo

It looks like they are both alive now. Here is my piaware.out after reboot

Thank you all for the help.


pi@raspberrypi /tmp $ cat piaware.out
11/21/2014 10:51:10 ****************************************************
11/21/2014 10:51:10 piaware version 1.18 is running, process ID 2080
11/21/2014 10:51:10 your system info is: Linux raspberrypi 3.12.28+ #709 PREEMPT Mon Sep 8 15:28:00 BST 2014 armv6l GNU/Linux
11/21/2014 10:51:10 connecting to FlightAware eyes.flightaware.com/1200
11/21/2014 10:51:10 got 'couldn't open socket: no such device or address (Temporary failure in name resolution)' to adept server at eyes.flightaware.com/1200, will try again soon...
11/21/2014 10:51:10 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:51:10 no ADS-B producer program seen for 1 seconds (or since piaware started), will attempt to start it next check after 360 seconds...
11/21/2014 10:51:10 no ADS-B producer (dump1090, modesmixer, etc) appears to be running or is not listening for connections on port 30005, next check in 5m
11/21/2014 10:52:24 0 msgs recv'd from (not currently connected to an adsb source); 0 msgs sent to FlightAware
11/21/2014 10:52:24 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:53:07 connecting to FlightAware 70.42.6.203/1200
11/21/2014 10:53:07 FlightAware server SSL certificate validated
11/21/2014 10:53:07 encrypted session established with FlightAware
11/21/2014 10:53:07 autoUpdate is not configured in /etc/piaware or by piaware-config
11/21/2014 10:53:07 manualUpdate is not configured in /etc/piaware or by piaware-config
11/21/2014 10:53:08 logged in to FlightAware as user jeffwingo
11/21/2014 10:53:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:54:07 server is sending alive messages; we will expect them
11/21/2014 10:54:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:55:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:56:10 seconds since last message or startup (301) less than threshold for action (3600), waiting...
11/21/2014 10:56:10 no ADS-B producer program seen for 301 seconds (or since piaware started), will attempt to start it next check after 360 seconds...
11/21/2014 10:56:10 no ADS-B producer (dump1090, modesmixer, etc) appears to be running or is not listening for connections on port 30005, next check in 5m
11/21/2014 10:56:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:56:40 0 msgs recv'd from (not currently connected to an adsb source) (0 in last 4m); 0 msgs sent to FlightAware
11/21/2014 10:57:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:58:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 10:59:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 11:00:25 no ADS-B data program is serving on port 30005, next check in 60s
11/21/2014 11:01:10 seconds since last message or startup (601) less than threshold for action (3600), waiting...
11/21/2014 11:01:10 starting faup1090 to translate 30005 beast to 10001 flightaware
11/21/2014 11:01:10 started faup1090 (process ID 2277)
11/21/2014 11:01:25 ADS-B data program 'mr-dump1090' is listening on port 30005, so far so good
11/21/2014 11:01:25 i see faup1090 serving on port 10001
11/21/2014 11:01:25 connecting to faup1090 on port 10001...
11/21/2014 11:01:25 piaware is connected to faup1090 on port 10001
11/21/2014 11:01:26 piaware received a message from the ADS-B source!
11/21/2014 11:01:43 2 msgs recv'd from mr-dump1090 via faup1090 (2 in last 5m); 3 msgs sent to FlightAware
11/21/2014 11:02:00 piaware has successfully sent several msgs to FlightAware!
pi@raspberrypi /tmp $



Allow me to recap.
The way I was able to get ADS-B data to both FlightAware and FlightRadar24 was to start by configuring the RPi to run FR24FEED per the instructions on the FR24 site.

I changed the fr24feed to use the mr-dump1090 version and added the extra configuration lines per the discussion above.

Then I added the piaware program only since the dump1090 (more specifically, mr-dump1090) was already installed.

I think that is all it really took. I knew it was working when I could open both the fr24feed web page on the local host:8754 and the dump1090 at local host:8080. Of course I also saw each website report my feed as online.

Next: get the antenna outside and above the house and maybe I’ll see some of my planes actually show up on these sites.

Great!

You can also start testing with indoor antenna. I have two receivers, one is still using the 10-15cm (4-6") whip antenna that came with the DVB-T stick, and this can get messages up to almost 90nm. Standard ~1m cable from the antenna. This antenna is by the window facing north, and the building is an old industrial garage that has metal sheets in outer walls and roof, and not too many windows. Fairly close to faraday cage I believe, I can get only very poor FM radio (88-108MHz here) reception indoors, have to use net radios for backgound “noise” when I work with my off-road trucks. Cannot get any GPS coverage indoors at all, and I have pretty good GPS receivers (sifr star IV chips in those) in both trucks places in the roof and hood, those can see 10 or so satellites most of the time when outdoors even in the woods.

The other receiver is at home, I was getting only very few planes with the 10-15cm (4-6") whip antenna that came with the DVB-T stick, bit te antenna was nest to the servers under a table almost buried with cables (ethernet, serial, USB, SATA, etc.). So I made a simple one like this: antirez.com/news/46. Now I get fairly good reception, up to almost 60mn with 2m (TV antenna) cable from the antenna. This antenna is placed about 2m high, just a few innches from the inner roof, against the outer wall.

But I just turn green when other folks report 200-300mn distances, so I’m going also for outdoor antennas next summer, now the roofs are far too slippery for safe antenna installations.

This forum has several different antenna designs, I just hope someone (preferably in a location with a lot of planes in every direction, and this pretty much excludes me) could to a proper test comparing different DIY antennas both indoor and outdoor locations, optionally testing different heights for the outdoor antennas (maybe with just a couple of antennas to keep the effort reasonable).

-Paavo

I built the outdoor antenna design that uses the 8 lengths of coax. It sits in a window upstairs facing east. Picks up planes 90 miles away to the east.