Hi everybody !
I’m running a PiAware setup on a Raspberry Pi 2 and (except for MLAT at the moment) it works rather well. Now I also have an unused Pi B+ lying around, and was wondering if that one is still working with the latest PiAware builds. It is not mentioned as supported on the PiAware site.
If it helps, the secondary location where I would put it and with the old cheapo RTL-SDR stick and antenna, I think it would hardly ever see more than ~10 a/c at a time.
Cheers
Ben
The sdcard image does still suport a 1B+. We actually have a few FlightFeeders still in the field that use a 1B+. Probably not much CPU headroom left after dump1090 + piaware + mlat though, so I wouldn’t try to put other stuff on it too.
Awesome, thanks! Will try this ASAP.
I retired my 1B+ almost a year ago because its CPU usage was persistently above 90%.
Well this may be because it not only had Piaware (mlat-enabled) and dump1090-fa, but also had:
Apologies if there’s a better thread to “bump”, or the answer lives in the forum already (I couldn’t find it).
I’m looking to find the “minimum viable Pi” (MVP?) able to run PiAware. My situation is when I started feeding FA a year ago or so, I just grabbed a 3B+ that I had, which wasn’t being used, and basically zip-tied it under my eaves in a “not intended for outdoor use” case.
Living in San Diego, “outdoor” here isn’t that far from “indoor” when I lived in Wisconsin, so I figured it’d work at least for while - and it’s actually (mostly) held up for over a year.
However, I may now have a use for the 3B+ and further, I’m getting more frequent hiccups from the device, such that I think it’s time to build a more permanent solution.
What would be ideal (I think - happy for advice), is to get the lowest power Pi that will do the job and put it in a sealed box under the eaves.
I’ve seen posts referencing the newly announced RPi 5, but frankly I don’t see why I’d want to buy an expensive top-of-the-line model that will generate more heat (a potential problem with a sealed box), when something like a 3A+ or Zero2W may work fine, cost a fraction of the price, and run cool enough I don’t have to try to sort out active cooling.
This thread (5+ years old now) sort of asks a similar question, and I couldn’t find anything newer. I had hoped for some “sticky” post outlining minimum requirements but didn’t find one.
I’d be very interested in thoughts, comments, advice, and experience on the topic, not just “what Pi to get?” (and perhaps some ‘why?’), but also if there are thoughts on the enclosure. I was thinking of something like a small Pelican case with a couple pass through holes (for power and antenna), and putting the Pi, SDR, and maybe USB power supply all inside.
Thanks.
(Apologies for necroposting…this seemed worth of a few electrons…) For what it’s worth, here’s my experience and opinion based on feeding several years with a Pi 3A+.
It seems the Pi Model 3B+ is currently available at close to pre-covid prices allegedly new on amazon (US) and the Pi 3A+ is only a minor amount less than that. I’d go with the 3B+ and maybe buy a spare (in case it dies or gets shorted out). If you think heat would be an issue, I would add a small fan to the case as well as heat sinks.
The additional performance and power consumption of the Pi4 and Pi5 add zero value, especially for the additional price, over a Pi3 to my production feeder setup. I suppose a Pi Zero could function, but you would need to work at it and watch it.
Many have posted innovative and functional Pi enclosures. Ruggedizing (and cooling) might likely exceed the cost of the Pi.
I have been e-cycling HP thin clients (story here) and had scored a deal ($45USD) on HP T630 units (wireless, TWO M.2 SATA slots, 8GB memory), power consumption 3-5 WATTS AC (amounts to killing an ant with an A-bomb 
) It would be perfect to stick in the garage for the reasons I mentioned in the story. However, I do worry about overheating, and the case is large (about 9"x10"x1") and likely would not survive the dirty environment. But something to look at as an alternative.
I have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ (512MB memory, 4 cores, single USB) with the blue Flightaware dongle feeding Flightware and a couple of others. dump1090-fa, piaware, tar1090, graphs1090 with a UPS backup board attached to the Pi. The feeder sits in a garage mounted on an open frame with no heatsink or fan, just convection. Consistent power draw 5.1VDC 0.35-0.5amps. I’ve run the feeder on Stretch and Buster-based versions of RaspiOS (32bit). As can be seen from the memory utilization graph below, it’s MOSTLY OK. I did leave swap space configured, since early on I notice swap was being used. The ‘risk’ of very slightly elevated SD card wear versus out-of-memory events is worth it to me. The same 32GB SD card has been in use all this time.
I ran a development instance of an upgraded Bookworm-based Pi feeder on a spare Pi 3A+/64-bit OS, and was disappointed to find more memory utilization, more swap use, so decided if/when I do update to v9 piaware, it will be on a Pi3B+ (double the memory) for a very slightly higher power use (measured as about an addition 0.1amp).
Memory utilization over time (I did not retain feeder performance info for before Sep 2020, moved)
CPU Heat profile over time:
Thanks, @AhrBee - that seems a reasonable suggestion, other than I’m hoping for a sealed box (for weatherproofing - to hang outside my house, under the eaves), and I’m not sure a fan that’s simply stirring the internal (to the box) air, is going to help a lot with cooling. It looks like the power draw from a 3B+ is 0.5W more than a 3A+ for the same operational load (same programs running), so they are probably roughly comparable in that regard (if passive cooling would work for the 3A, it’ll probably work for the 3B).
Can you tell me more about what you are doing for the UPS (you note using a UPS board with the Pi)? I haven’t seen that done, but it sounds like something I’d like to try.
Regards,
Why outside the house? Is there a problem in placing the Pi inside the house?
The 3A+ runs faster than the 3B+, 1.5 GHz vs 1.4 Ghz. It also uses less power as I recall. Performance is significantly better than a PiZero versions. 3A+ is about 3/4 inch shorter, and the WiFi uses a much better antenna. Only a single USB port, so most of your interactions will likely be via ssh. Very capable single board system. And with the 512 MByte memory, swap space is recommended, though likely not needed much. Recommend GitHub - wiedehopf/graphs1090: Graphs for readsb / dump1090-fa / dump1090 (based on dump1090-tools by mutability) to keep tabs on your system. Have fun out there, Love my Pi3A+ !
Following post serves as a Guide “How to Add Swap File on microSD card”.
The UPS board I purchased years ago is unobtanium. A similar device is Pi UPS at amazon(us). I would stay away from this type personally, since I have gone through a couple that simply stopped working. The one I have now has the pair of 18650 batteries; these lasted me 3 years before replacement. Power interruptions are rare, but I don’t want power to be pulled and lose the graphs1090 being retained in RAM without an orderly shutdown.
Power draw of Pi 3A+ in my environment was measured at about 200mW less than the 3B+ running the same equipment and processes (I simply swapped the SD card between units when testing). I am in flyover country so the ADSB processing was relatively unstressed during daytime testing (6-10 aircraft at most at any time, mostly just a couple). This was in a 32-bit RaspiOS base. If you are going to go with the 3A+ and the current RaspiOS (bookworm, 64bit), be aware that the /run tmpfs is sized too low by default to effectively run readsb+tar1090+graphs1090+piaware+otherfeeds (runs out of free space). The fix is simply size it to 90MB in /etc/fstab. And nothing wrong with using swap, just need to be mindful of how often is it being used to avoid sandpapering the card… Hope this is useful in setting your expectations for your project.
@abcd567 - In an effort to maximize range, my antenna is on a short pole on top of a weather station / TV antenna on my roof:
I suppose I could simply take the antenna down and bring it all indoors; suffering the loss of reception. It’s not like I’m in an area devoid of coverage, and there appears at least one fellow PiAware provider who is more or less a couple miles away up on top of the hill (so they get all my ‘hits’ plus more). That feels like a bit of a surrender, though, as opposed to solving the problem in a more rigorous engineer-y way. I’ve also got some vague aspirations to maybe track shipping/AIS, and again, where I expect elevation would be useful.
@astrodeveloper the data sheets I’ve found suggest the 3A+ has a the same (1.4GHz) chip as the 3B+, but past that (which really isn’t a huge deal) they seem similar. Since I’ve got a 3B+ already in the role, I think I’ll just leave it be, and buy something better (4? 5?) for my new application. The 1GB RAM in the 3B does seem worth having to avoid swap issues.
@AhrBee thanks for the UPS link at Amazon. That seems like the sort of thing I should get for the same reasons you lay out - sudden power loss is a PITA, and easily mitigated with an affordable route like this.
Thanks all for the sage advice.
–Mark
Another one who is operating an Ecowitt weatherstation and a Flight Feeder 
I do have the same approach, both on the same pole.
Nice setup. A more robust Pi (4 or 5) would give you the resources to add on other applications on teh same device.The newer devices will give the options of more memory and the ability to use SSD instead of an SD card. You can even look at the EASY Button for multiple ADSB feeders from the same host.
@abcd567 and others have done quite a bit AIS (ship tracking). I see an Ambient Weather WS2902 (or similar) - consider weewx with an interceptor driver (if you have not yet tapped into the weather station) for another net time sink 
Good hunting!
Thanks @AhrBee - more good suggestions. I currently feed FR24, and (IIRC) ADSB exchange. No harm in sharing farther and wider, I suppose.
I do have an Ambient station, and currently share that with Wunderground, and Ambient itself (via the Ambient built-in feed capability). I’ll look at Weewx (although I really don’t need yet another time sink…)
I recall seeing @abcd567 talking about AIS a while ago (he is into everything it seems!). Since I’m looking out at the Pacific Ocean, I figure I might get some decent data, but I probably need another antenna (and SDR?) since it’ll be a different frequency.
Maybe it is time to bring it all back indoors, and put it on a better Pi (4?) that I could use for other purposes as well (been thinking about trying to implement PiHole ) .
If you have access to your attic, you could bring the antenna “indoors” and feed the cable to an office or other room where your spouse wouldn’t mind it. Or alternatively, you could feed your cable into the attic through your overhang. It’s not fun working up there, but I did it at my old house in Atlanta during the winter and it wasn’t too bad. Just a lot of itchy fiberglass insulation to work through.
In my setup, I have an antenna on a pole mounted to a trellis attached to my deck. The cable feeds down under the deck and into the basement, where the Pi tends to stay cool. The antenna is just barely above my roofline this way, but I’ll be adding some height soon to get it above my chimney (and some of my neighbor’s roofs).
I’m running a Pi-3B+ with just Flight Aware while I figure out how to maximize my setup (I’ll feed other sites later). This wet weekend has indicated I might have water seeping into the antenna itself, causing loss of signal. When it’s dry and things are busy at my local airports I’m picking up 250,000+ signals and up to 2,500 aircraft per day. When it’s wet, I drop about 60% on positions and 30% on aircraft.
If you’re really stuck on an outdoor enclosure, you really do need some way to dissipate the heat, even in temperate San Diego. Since you’re piercing the box for 120V anyway, you could run a simple water-cooling system to a heat sink attached to the Pi, and cycle that to another sink on the outside of the box. Automotive coolant (or one of the coolants purpose-designed for water-cooled PC cases), some plastic tubing, a small pump, and some aluminum heat sinks designed for the task should do the job.
I use one of these. Or, you could make your own.
Reporting back here for anyone who cares.
I don’t have an attic (vaulted ceilings), but I do have a small HVAC crawl space above a closet, and it reaches the peak of the roof line, so I put an antenna on a stick as high as I could get it up in the space and wired it to a Pi I borrowed from another project. I compared the results and found something interesting (to me).
If I look at an instantaneous snap of what I’m seeing
The Antenna 5 ft above the roof line sees (instantaneously) noticeably more planes than the one inside the attic ~120 vs. 80. However at the end of the day, there is little difference on the count:
(Red arrow indicates the day I nudged the antenna as high as it would go in the crawl space)
I’m down to ~5% difference of the total plane count between the two sites.
Considering what I see and how it’s measured, I expect that from the roof top I can see planes “on final” into LAX - which I don’t see from the crawlspace. However, FA isn’t counting “airline flights”, it’s counting “airframes spotted”, and since (for all practical purposes) any planes that land at LAX eventually take off - where I can see them out over the ocean from either site - there isn’t much difference at the end of the day.
Similarly, I get a number of transpacific flights from Hawaii (not so much from Asia flying great circle) and with the higher antenna I see them sooner (250+nm on a good day) but they eventually get closer to the mainland, and then the crawlspace picks them up too.
So given this - and the fact I know there are others supplying the “LAX arrivals” to FA, I will probably just remove the antenna from the roof (and hence the Pi from under the eaves), and leave the antenna in the crawlspace - moving the Pi to the closet.
Thanks to all who gave thoughts and input. It’s a great community to have access to!
–Mark
What is the difference in height of the two antennas?
I have found out that my installation with approx. 15ft between the antenna position doesn’t make a significant difference. I only see more aircraft because my own house is not in the way if the antenna is higher.
I don’t know why you wouldn’t just use the antenna on the roof and retire the antenna that is living such a sheltered life in the attic. Your signal view from above the roof is going to allow you to see surrounding aircraft that are just passing through and not landing at LAX. I would also bring the Rpi into the house where you both can enjoy the benefits of not being exposed to the extremes of weather.
