After some consideration and looking around I activated my 9th & 10th site today.
I 'd like to compare the different hardware and the results they give when playing with variables.
So now I have 10 sites active and they are mostly identical in setup.
5 x Orange Pi with Flightaware dongle and filter, 3 FA antenna (indoor) , 2x Vinnant Col1090/S antenna (outdoor and indoor) and 1 Chinese Alibaba antenna (indoor) that came with the flightaware dongle and filter ( This one i bought second hand).
1 Orange Pi with a RTL-SDR v3 dongle and a Flight aware filter and a cheap antenna belonging to an RTL SDR set ( The antenna wil be replaced, looking for a Vinnant 7.5 or 10 dB antenna when they become available again)
Dongle and filter were in total 50 Euro so not to bad for used equipment. New set wil cost around 75 euro (including shipping) when bought in NL.
2 Raspberry Pi 3Bās with Flightaware dongle, filter and 2x antenna (1 outdoor, 1 indoor)
1 Raspberry Pi 3 B with a Radarbox Micro dongle and standard small Radarbox Whip. (The dongle and antenna were sold for 15 euro so I couldnāt resist)
The best results are coming form the outdoor antennaās of course.
Trailing behind that are the indoor setups with all around equal results.
To my surprise the Chinese Alibaba antenne is perform equally to the Flight aware antenna located next to it.
The Radar box dongle and antenna are performing the poorest of all the setups so far, but thatās for testing purposes only so I donāt worry about that.
Anybody else as crazy as I am ? The hobby is fun and it keeps that way for 4 years already, longest uptime currently on antenna nr 1 is 1605 days and the newest one just 1 day
Very interesting! I have a couple questions related to the Orange Piās.
Which specific model(s) are you using? It looks like they offer a handful of options (disclosure - I never heard of them before reading this post, but Iām now digging into the details); itās not clear to me which are ābestā for the application here (where best is probably ācheapest that can adequately manage the effortā)?
What is the power draw for them in this application? Iām pondering trying to construct some āsolar powered, battery supported configurationā I can stuff in a weatherproof box and put up with the antenna on the roof. Low power is a must for that, and Iāve been thinking I need to wait for a RaspPi Zero 2 W to come available - but maybe thereās an option here?
[Aside - will a RaspPi Zero (not 2) handle the effort?]
Are you able to use the āRaspPi based installationsā from FA (and FR24, etc.) for this? Is the Orange OS close enough to Raspbian to make it work?
You referenced some feedback on the comparative performance of the antennas, but what about the sticks/filters? Iām currently using a RTL-SDRv3 without a filter, and want to improve my setup. Iāve been doing some reading on the FA (orange and blue), and ADSB sticks, (not the Radarbox - but maybe I should add it) - and Iām curious to know if youāre seeing differences between, say, a RTL-SDR+filter vs. Radarbox, or vs. Flightaware+filter (I assume Orange FA if you need the filter too).
I appreciate your sharing of what youāve learned
Iām using the Orange Pi 2+E model, main reason for that is that they standard have 2GB of RAM and a 16 GB EMMC card on the board. Once setup on an SD card you can then transfer the card to the EMMC and since that is a chip it greatly reduces wear and tear on the SD card.
They all have a normal PSU and thatās comparable to a Raspberry Pi 3b.
As for the OS Iām using Armbian, a variant of the Debian OS that is also the basis for the Raspberry PI OS.
I donāt use the SD card images but always do the package based install. I have more running on the Piās then just the FA software, they are all connected to my home automation system so I can monitor them,
And with 2 GB it runs smoothly with an average 10% Mem load with FA, FR24 and. Adsbexhange as feeders.
Also I have Graphs1090 on them and it runs like a breeze, average 8-12 % CPU load.
I like all my equipment for flightfeeding connected via wired Ethernet, I often see problems with Wi-Fi connections and the build in antennaās of the PI and Orange Pi are generally weak in terms of distance.
Overall the flightaware dongles are better the RTL-SDR and the Radarbox dongle. Maybe that will change with the new antenna but the main difference is the built-in LNA in the blue prostick from FA. Both the RTL-SDR and the Radarbox lack that and in doing so they have a lesser range without filtering and/or LNA
I donāt have the Orange FA stick since I live in a urban environment where filtering is almost a must ( lot of cell towers nearby) and Iām living in one of the approaches of EHAM so sometimes I have aircraft as close as 0.5-1.0 NM and then the receivers get overloaded easily
@SweetPea11, it sounds like youāre successful with a PiZeroW (not ā2ā) - is there any reason (other than the current lack of supply) you havenāt replaced the others with more ZeroWās? Iām currently using a 3B+ and 4B (one is serving, while I debug stuff on the other), but at some point Iām aiming for this project to be standalone and hands-off so I can move on to try some other stuff, and when that day comes Iād like to have it running on a $10-15 Pi so I can repurpose the more powerful and expensive 3B and 4 elsewhere.
@tomvdhorst, have you any experience with the ADSBExchange.com Blue dongle? It seems comparable to the FA Pro Stick (comes with a filter built in), a metal case (better on thermal), and less expensive at the moment. I guess Iām fortunate in that my wifi seems workable (using Netgear Orbi mesh) with the intention of setting this up outside. Initial plans are under my eaves (near an external outlet), but perhaps eventually in a self contained solar box. In either case Eth isnāt really an option for me. Is your issue connectivity (they simply donāt connect to your wifi) or bandwitdh (they connect, but the data rate requirement is too high to be supported)? I donāt feel like I see much traffic from the Pi to the wifi - if it connects, it works - but maybe I need to look more closely.
The Blue ADSBexchange dongle hasnāt crossed my path so far, I havenāt seen it on sale in The Netherlands yet. Another test set up maybe
Wifi wise itās more a matter of connecting the equipment to the routers, not the issue of not having bandwidth.
I have a switch in every room in my house so the connections are not that big of an issue.
Trafficwise it isnāt much that is being send back and forth so the traffic volume shouldnāt be a problem.
I live in an appartment building with lots of Wi-fi routers and getting a free channel with interference is the bigger challenge there.
RaspPi Zero 2 W to come available - but maybe thereās an option here?
[Aside - will a RaspPi Zero (not 2) handle the effort?]
Iāve got a lot of Pi devices but only two for PiAware (and FR24 plus ADSBx), both mine run on a zero W. Ideal for portable scenarios as, using a USB volt/amp meter mine takes around 400mA with the ADS-B tuner plugged in. Even on boot up it doesnāt touch 500mA.
Whilst it would struggle if you want charts and graphs the zero W has, in my experience, dealt with just maps and data exchange very well over the 4+ years Iāve been on here.
@send2gl thank for the info! I had seen the power draw on the ZeroWās referenced around 120-150mA, but I hadnāt considered the draw from the dongle (duh), so now Iāll have to ponder a nominal 2W load if I want to try to solar/battery them. Now if only RPiās were shipping anywhere in world, and I would grab a couple ZeroWās.
@tomvdhorst - I found the ADSB blue dongle available on Amazon here in the US (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09F2ND4R6) where it comes bundled with an antenna (allegedly for 1090MHz) and a preloaded 8GB SDcard. With āfreeā prime shipping, thatās the same price ($40) for all as for just the FA-Pro (Blue) at FA.com, and then Iād have to pay $12 for shipping. All that makes the ADSB a much better deal, so I ordered one (should be here tomorrow?) and I will report what I find. Perhaps Amazon ships these to NED as well?
Once I get it, Iāll have two Piās (3B+ and 4B) and two radios (RTL-SDR and ADSB blue stick) to compare. Right now, Iāve got an SDcard running a working installation feeding FA (and FR24), and Iāve cloned it such that the two Piās are basically identical. Iāve been swapping the Radio dongle back and forth as I putter with things, and while that impacts things internally (each Pi has a different IP) AFAICT it makes no difference to FA (or FR24) - each Pi thinks itās the same āunique locationā with the same identifier, so whichever one has the dongle at any given time is feeding āmyā data to FA.
However once I have two up and running simultaneously, I expect this will not work so well (two āuniqueā identifiers seems problematic), so Iām curious what to do. Should I create a new/second unique ID and have two sources? If so how do I accomplish that - Iām guessing thereās a āFA config fileā somewhere that I delete, and then restart the service? If/when I have a second ID going, how do I attach it to my FA account? Presumably this will be an issue for FR24, et al. as well, but thatās a question for another forum.
It sounds like there are a number of folks running multiple incarnations at once - whatās the āprotocolā for doing this? Thanks in advance for any advice.
I thought I was bad as I have 6 Pi 4/4GB all but two mounted in a 1U rack (both of which need to be close to their respective antennas at the far end of the loft) and all powered from my main 26-port PoE switch that also has SFP connections to three (soon to be four) other switches and PoE to three WAPās scattered around the house.
They all do different jobs so are not worked too hard;
Spare Pi used to update Raspbian system software to check for stability before rolling it out across the others, test other apps out first and as a hot spare in case of hardware failure on one of the others.
The next Pi will be a Weather server for my Davis weather station so I will clone the SD Card on 6 to keep an up-to-date working vanilla backup with my admin account and commonly used utilities all set up and then install the weather software using a new IP Address & Hostname, configure & test it.
At the same time the cloned SD Card will be slotted into a new Pi 4 (when I can get one) and go back to its previous role of guinea pig/hot spare.
All Piās have a cloned SD Card sitting in one of the USB3.0 ports in case of failure.
Iām still paranoid of losing my VR and HA boxes though as many hours/days/weeks/months have gone into getting them where they are today but despite that I am still not a Linux expert so wouldnāt relish the task of rebuilding them if the unthinkable happened.
I still havenāt updated my VR box to the latest FA/RB24 and a further 152 Raspbian packages despite having cloned my cloned SD Card in case of something going wrong!
The to-do list for my VR box is starting to stack up now as apart from updating the packages I really want to do some comparisons between the existing AN FlightStick and FA Pro Stick Plus with/without the FA dark blue 1090 filter, Airspy and Kuhne LNA 1090 A TM. Was also hoping to add the FA Pro Stick X to the list if/when it finally appears.
The list is NOT complete. Please add the missing ones.
- The Raspberry Pi 4B - The Raspberry Pi 3B+ - The Raspberry Pi 3A+ - The Raspberry Zero 2 W - The Raspberry Zero W - The Raspberry Zero - The Odroid C2 - The Odroid C4 - The ODROID N2 - The ODROID-XU4 - The Orange Pi PC - The Orange Pi 3 - The Rock 3A - Radxa Zero - The Odyssey X86J4105 - The VisionFive - The Nezha - The Rock Pi 4B - The LattePanda - The Tinker Board - The LattePanda Alpha - The LattePanda Delta - The NVIDIA Jetson Nano - The Atomic Pi - The Khadas VIM3 - The NanoPi M4 - The NanoPi NEO4 - The Edge-V - The VIM2 - The ROCKPro64 - The UDOO x86 Advanced Plus - The ROCK64 - The Banana Pro - The LeMaker Guitar - The HiKey 960
I can get the same ADSBexchange order from Amazon towards NED but I will wait a little while longer.
I donāt think the antenna supplied with it is up to the job but surprise me
In order to get your 2nd sites running you will need to remove the feeder keys from the new setups (prior to getting them live).
Otherwise the receiving servers will keep on switching between them and then one of them will report down
from your perspective.
As long you move just one dongle this will do no harm but with multiple ones this will be an issue since the reports recieved will be confusing for the recieving server.
After connecting the second equipment claim a second ID from FA, FR 24 etc.
For FR24 the config file is located here:
This is the config file: /etc/fr24feed.ini
As a result of āClaim your Piawareā and above two commands, the file /etc/piaware.conf is like this:
sudo cat /etc/piaware.conf
# This file configures piaware and related software.
# You can edit it directly or use piaware-config from the command line
# to view and change settings.
#
# If /boot/piaware-config.txt also exists, then settings present in
# that file will override settings in this file.
feeder-id 12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc # updated by fa_piaware_config
allow-auto-updates yes # updated by fa_piaware_config
allow-manual-updates yes # updated by fa_piaware_config
#Set the value
sudo piaware-config [PARAMETER] [VALUE]
#Restart piaware to implement the value
sudo systemctl restart piaware
#Now check file /etc/piaware.conf to make sure new setting has been saved
sudo cat /etc/piaware.conf
In total I have 22 running ,16 Rasberry Piās, 6 Orange Piās.
RasberryPiās are ranging from 1B+ till Pi 4 and every model in between except the Pi Zeroās, I donāt have Piās with wireless only connections.
They are used for
Home automation 1 Master server (also acting as Fail2Ban server, 3 slave servers supplying inputs from RFXCOM (433 MHZ transmitters and recievers like temp sensors, door sensors, fire alarms)
UPS monitoring (5x UPS and thus 5x RaspBerry Pi for monitoring them)
1 Weather Station
1 Retro game console
10x Flightfeeder
2 test machines (Pi 2 and Pi 3 series to implement updates and test them prior to pushing the update to the other Piās.
On the shelf are still 6-7 Orange Piās waiting until I have a use for them.
Lots of goodies to play with.
I keep updates on par with their releases, I wrote a script that will download and implement the updates without rebooting so they only get activated when I want them to be active ( after a reboot).
The script runs weekly on midnight of every saturday, If some goes wrong I will detect it the next morning since saturday morning is the default back-up morning where all PCās and Piās make their back-ups at 8 AM.
In case a Pi fails then I start with a new SD card and vanilla installation of the OS.
After that I will restore the latest back-up for that machine. (incremental back-ups are made every hour and the full back-up is made weekly).
Worst case will mean I have a data loss of 1 hour and thatās fine with me since this is a hobby and not a living
@tomvdhorst thanks for the reply. To clarify, when you say āclaim a second ID from FAā¦ā is that from the website or via the Pi (some āstartup scriptā)? Part of what is puzzling me, is that I have a āfeeder-idā (long Hex value) in /etc/piaware.conf , but when I look at my personal stats https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/SDMark
it tells me my āSite IDā is 179713. Iām not clear what role each of these plays. Do I need to obtain a new site ID, a new feeder-id, both?
I ran the three commands you reference, and when I ācatā the config file I still see my existing feeder-id value.
I edited the /etc/piaware.conf to delete the existing feeder-id, then rebooted. A check of piaware-status showed that it still has the same feeder-id; and told me where it was getting it " (from /var/cache/piaware/feeder_id)"
So I went there and deleted it. Confirmed it hadnāt repopulated /etc/piaware.conf and rebooted again. This time piaware-status shows a new feeder-id ! So I think āsuccessā!
After a bit of a wait, I checked on the āclaim your PiAwareā page, and the second Pi now shows up with a new Site ID - so evidently the Site ID and feeder-id are linked 1:1 (?)
The remaining question - going back and repeating a cat /etc/piaware.conf there is no feeder-id listed. I had presumed the new one would get written in there, but itās blank. Do I need to manually cut/paste it in? I do see it now in /var/cache/piaware/feeder_id so maybe thatās good enough?
Thanks @abcd567 - so I donāt need to bother updating /etc/piaware.conf
Side bar question - if I have two feeders with two different site IDs, sitting side by side, how is their data counted? presumably they are recording many of the same planes (perhaps even a complete overlap) - I presume that doesnāt count towards my total āaircraft reportedā; two Piās each measuring the same 1000 planes in a day should only count for ā1000ā not ā2000ā - right?
The numbers will be treated as separate numbers so you aircraft count will end up in 1000 + 1000 = 2000
I have 9 sites and a total of 20.000 aircraft per day which will be mostly the same since the feeders are at the same location.
Flightaware counts the aircraft itself only once per 24 hrs. So if the same aircraft with the same registrations performs multiple flights per day it will still only register 1 aircraft.
The postions of that aircraft are added to the total number.
I have a Medevac helicopter close by, each flight is registered but it will only count as one aircraft per 24 hrs.
