There’s a few reasons we decided to do this project. First, it’s cool to have sitting on the end of your desk. I’ve had a few people drop by and check it out.
Second, we’d like to make configuring your PiAware easier. The team is looking at putting together a Desktop image that comes with PiAware and pre-installed programs that makes editing config files a thing of the past.
Finally, we can only send out so many free FlightFeeders. We are often asked by applicants if they can buy one because they don’t have the technical skills or time to build a PiAware. Selling FlightFeeders presents its own problems, so we are considering making a pre-built PiAware with a touchscreen similar to the above available via Amazon.
We’d love to hear what you think about this idea. Would you be interested in anything I’ve outlined?
I’d often thought about doing something similar (ie the Pi and the screen) and feeding it direct from my feeder Pi (site 8312). Only real downside for us Aussies is the $$ (blame the crappy exchange rate!) For example the case blows out from approx AU$38 off the Amazon US site to $52 on the Amazon AU site - and that’s not including shipping.
There is probably alternatives avialable cheaper, just would require some investigation.
For this touchscreen setup, include an onscreen toggle in the settings which lets someone put the unit into “carrying mode”. This would be for enthusiasts to take it out with them on a portable power source, to airports or airshows. The unit continues to display what it sees but it’s not sending that data to FlightAware because the location and elevation is obviously changing. When they get back they can put it back into “home mode” and feeding resumes.
More generally, make the SkyAware screen more mobile / touchscreen / tablet friendly. At the moment the zooming and scrolling around the interface is a bit awkward; you have to find a bit of the display that’s not the map to grab onto, and it’s possible to lose it and become difficult to move between the aircraft details and the map view. Detecting the browser User-Agent or having a toggle for the touchscreen and a standard mobile-friendly interface would be a great plus.
I have this built and running but other than the ability to SSH into it to start things up i can’t take advantage of the on screen keyboard or start in a GUI environment in order to launch the on screen keyboard. raspi-config allows me to change the boot options to a desktop environment but entering user and password there just runs off and comes back to the logon screen.
Could you offer some pointers or a link or two to an old Windows guy so i can get the Skyaware screen running like in your example?
Sorry I didn’t respond earlier, I’m actually on vacation this week and currently off the coast of the Baja Peninsula.
I’ll be honest, I cheated a bit and use a wireless keyboard and mouse combo to do most of the initial config. I had to remove the SDR in order to use them.
Once everything was installed I set the home screen in Chromium to http://127.0.0.1:8080 then on boot it’s easy to open the browser and go full screen.
I’ll be in Cabo tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to post photos of the prototype tomorrow in some place scenic!
I’ve been playing with this and trying to make it work, but I seem to be running into the same issue as two of the above posters regarding getting into the GUI. Not sure where I’m going wrong. Would you mind posting some more detailed instructions on how you installed and set up everything?
Cool idea but personally I wouldn’t want a touchscreen on my Pi. I considered getting a Pi starter kit that included one but decided against it as I have a hard enough time trying to type things correctly on my smartphone. OTOH I’m considering redoing my Pi by installing Raspbian or another ARM distro on it then doing the package installations of dump1090-fa and piaware if I can think of how to be able to control its desktop over my LAN. VNC maybe, or ssh conduit. I miss having a GUI: it’s not easy doing everything from the command-line via ssh. (It’s kind of fun though. It takes me back to when I worked in a Unix shop in the late '80s/early '90s…)
One good thing about a ready-made Pi vs. the FlightFeeder boxes is the Pi can be assembled from readily available off the shelf parts and wouldn’t need to be custom-manufactured as I assume the FlightFeeders are, or at least the cases are if they have Pis inside. That would cut down on your costs. And as you suggested I imagine there would be a market for them if people wanted to buy a PiAware box but lacked the Linux or computer-assembly expertise to set everything up themselves. (I had a devil of a time figuring out where the heatsinks were supposed to go on my 3 B+ for example, and a Pi 4 would also need a fan installed adding to the complexity.)
@jaymot You can easily convert a headless unit and remotely connect to its desktop rather than the command line. Just enable VNC via raspi-config. If you deployed the LCD image you will get a rendering of the LCD status page and your mouse works like it would if you touched the screen. If you used a full image, the desktop is there even if you are running headless and will appear in the VNC window. You can then connect to skyview in the browser through the VNC window. If you deployed a lite disti without a desktop, one can be added. I can post some instructions if you need.
Thanks, but I’ve reimaged my SD card with Raspbian already since I posted that last September, enabled VNC Server in the Raspberry Pi Configuration and done a package installation of PiAware and ADSBx.
OTOH I’m considering redoing my Pi by installing Raspbian or another ARM distro on it then doing the package installations of dump1090-fa and piaware if I can think of how to be able to control its desktop over my LAN. VNC maybe, or ssh conduit. I miss having a GUI: it’s not easy doing everything from the command-line via ssh. (It’s kind of fun though. It takes me back to when I worked in a Unix shop in the late '80s/early '90s…)