pingStation Support

It would be useful to add support for the uAvioni pingStation (https://uavionix.com/products/pingstation/).

This device reports ADS-B detections via a REST api, so it should be pretty straightforward to integrate. The documentation is available at (https://uavionix.com/downloads/pingstation/pingStation-ICD.pdf).

Using Python3, I’m able to send the api request to the pingStation, and decode the json message. How can this be uploaded to FlightAware?

import requests
import pprint
response = requests.get("http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/api/v1/traffic")
print('Response = ' + str(response.status_code))

data = response.json()
print('Aircraft = ' + str(len(data['aircraft'])))
pprint.pprint(data['aircraft'][0])

Resulting in:

Response = 200
Aircraft = 24
{'altitudeType': 0,
 'detail': {'1090esMopsVersion': 0,
            'airGroundState': 0,
            'baroaltDiffMM': 99060,
            'emergencyStatus': 0,
            'geoVerticalAccuracy': 0,
            'identSwActive': 0,
            'magHeading': 0,
            'navAccuracy': 1,
            'navIntegrity': 0,
            'navIntegrityBaro': 0,
            'navPositionAccuracy': 0,
            'navVelocityAccuracy': 1,
            'surveilStatus': 0,
            'svHeadingType': 0,
            'sysIntegrityLevel': 0,
            'tcasAcasAdvisory': 0,
            'tcasAcasOperating': 0,
            'utcCoupledCondition': 0,
            'verVelocitySrc': 1,
            'verticalVelType': 1},
 'emitterType': 0,
 'headingDE2': 32085,
 'horVelocityCMS': 11369,
 'icaoAddress': 'AB0A95',
 'pingStationGuid': '################',
 'timeStamp': '2020-02-10T00:05:57.67Z',
 'trafficSource': 0,
 'utcSync': 1,
 'verVelocityCMS': -32}

We would require the original Mode S or UAT messages to be able to support this, not a decoded form. I don’t see a mechanism for that in the API you linked.

The price would also probably preclude most users in this forum rushing out to buy one.

A

3 Likes

The price would also probably preclude most users in this forum rushing out to buy one.

Spit my coffee out on that one…

3 Likes

It does not look like the original form is available, only the decoded messages via UDP or REST. I had hoped there would be a simple way to upload the decoded messages to FlightAware. Is this something that may be considered?

I am not suggesting that anyone purchase this over cheaper alternatives. However, if anyone (or any company) already has this on-hand collecting dust, I though it would be useful to repurpose this well packaged integrated hardware solution to contribute to the FlightAware community.

We really need the raw messages because if we only have decoded data, we don’t know what decoding tradeoffs have been made and those decisions may not match up with what we need. There’s also metadata that we need that “cooked” APIs like this don’t provide (e.g. how old is the data for each field? what was the underlying message type it came from?)

We did accept decoded data formats in the past (SBS & Planeplotter) but widespread data quality issues and a small feeder base meant that we couldn’t continue to support them.