Post your PiAware setup

Excellent Blog write-up. Neatly built & installed Cantenna.

Here is my new setup:



Looks great. How do the performances of your two systems compare?

Bought some new mounts for the mast and was able to get the antenna up another foot, also added a discone antenna for airband monitoring.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170719/a2f3460dd021a15ce123ce4e53de121e.jpg

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

My setup is nothing special… The FlightFeeder sits inside the garage (in bad need of painting) on a shelf on outside wall, with power from a power strip. WiFi connected to my house router(s).
Am am contemplating adding a stick of PVC of 2-3 meters to raise the antenna. It might be very ugly…

I’ve only been submitting data for 24 hours now :slight_smile:

Raspberry Pi 2 which is attached to the underside of my ham shack desk top, Pro Stick Plus, Wilson Electronics mini mag mount 700-2700 Mhz antenna which is placed on the windowsill on top of a small tin can. Even with this indoor antenna I have received data (not much, mind you) in the 50-100 mile range.

Today I installed the FlightAware antenna on an outside 20 foot mast and will run LMR400 coax into the shack to connect to the receiver. But that entails belly crawling in the basement to get the coax inside so completion will be another day. I’m sure this will improve my meager reception quite a bit!

I would have never known about this program without reading the article in the current edition of QST (a US ham radio journal) magazine.

Interesting to know there’s something in QST, mine hasn’t arrived yet but I’m keen to see the piece when it finally does.

I have two receivers, one using a two element home brew j-pole in the loft (which has been running for about eight months) and the other one is mounted at the top of a 33ft mast, all self contained and powered via PoE up a length of CAT6. The aerial is the Flight Aware 26" vertical, receiver is a Pro Stick Plus and I’ve got an additional FA bandpass filter in the box as well. There’s a small 6" coax pigtail from the base of the aerial to the bandpass filter and then another one between the filter and the dongle.

Here it is at the top of the mast. This receiver has only been running for a week or so and I only got it up the mast yesterday. I’ve deliberately edited out what else is on the mast because it somewhat detracts from my receiver.


It’s working rather well. For a limited time, I’m sharing the output to the internet and you can see it link removed

73 Keith.

Interesting. At 83 planes, 70 with positions you have 960-1000 msg/s. Right now I have 102 planes, 75 with positions and only 500 msg/s. Maybe because your proximity with a major airport?

My RasPi-setup at home (outside on the balcony):

  1. First I placed my Raspberry Pi 2 + FA ProStick + FA 1090 MHz Filter in a PET-bottle with 'air condition; circulation bottom ==> top via holes in the bottle, protected against insects :smiley: );
    https://image.ibb.co/nM49s5/setup_1.jpg

  2. later I installed the RasPi 2 + Filter into a box (waterproof)
    https://image.ibb.co/hvgps5/setup_2.jpg

  3. actually I have the Raspi 2 + FA ProStickPlus (blue) in the box
    https://image.ibb.co/bWOfzk/setup_3.jpg

My 5/8 antenna (from Stanilav Palo via ebay) is close and just above the box and connected via 2m RG-58 cable

My setup is connected to my router (with fixed IP) via WLAN (EDIMAX EW-7811-Un); power via 5m USB cable (adapter is inside).
Everything works very well …

Here’s my new receiver in a box, this is what’s mounted at the top of the mast from a couple of posts above this one.


I’ve written a blog post about my new setup which you can read here.

Nice setup in a weather proof box. Mounting all hardware at mast and using PoE is a good decision.

Read your blog post, nice writeup.

cheers … just my new site/setup …

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@TomMuc:
Elegant setup, specially the box providing the ground plane for stock whip “Für dich lass’ ich rote rosen regnen (For you I let red roses rain)”.

… still the same pillbox and abcd-modified antenna from back then :slight_smile:

@TomMuc
Amazing that you get maximum range 350km/average range 270km, with stock whip mounted indoors!

haha - yes :slight_smile: but it is not indoors - it’s on my western balcony table of my house. but over midday i get even more planes - while the raspi zero is at about 50% cpu load with ads-b and piaware/mlat …

and surprisingly the zero even can handle (connected to my loft-antenna with amp/filter) eg. about 220 aircrafts - 30 of them mlat at 70% cpu.
not bad for this tiny cheap 10$ computer!

btw. this is the full setup

and more antenna brings more reach and messages - but still small and portable …

final thoughts about this solar powered thing:

first is that all these solar-panels not really deliver their claimed power-rates. a good panel rated with 10 watts (5v 2a) in direct sun has in reality about 5 watts (5v 1a) and under cloudy sky about 1 watt (5v 0.2a)

secondly a pi zero w needs about 1 watt (5v 0.2a) running dump, piaware and mlat - the sdr-dongle needs about 1.5 watts (5v 0.3a). a gsm module is rated at about 2.5 watts (5v 0.5a) while transmitting data. so total power-consuption for a independent site/location without power and wifi is about 5 watts (5v 1a).

summary: 24h powerconsuption of the site is about 120wh. given a site latitude between n55° and s55° the shortest possible day is about 6h and given cloudy weather you’d need a panel rated with 200 watts to generate the 120wh within these 6 hours of cloudy sky. power-loss through cables and battery, transformation and temperature adds …

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New user here. Just joined a few days ago. I’ve previously played with my rtl-sdr and ads-b traffic but now I have PiAware up and running (at least for testing).

I was able to get PiAware running stable on C.H.I.P which really makes for a small footprint. I use the onboard wifi to connect to my network and feed data.


I just built a spider antenna with 4 ground radials. I plan on increasing this to 8. Also, this is pretty much where I have it running right now for testing. I’ll be moving the whole thing to my roof eventually, all it will need is power. It would be easy to convert this to a solar powered installation since the C.H.I.P has a JST battery connector + charge controller built in.


I documented my installation process on my website so that others can get PiAware running on their C.H.I.P. You can expect the performance to be a little better than a RaspberryPi Zero.


This was right after turning it on for the first time. I was suprised it worked because it is on the ground level, indoors, and this test was before I built the spider antenna so it was just a random piece of wire.


I’m keeping this post short but you are welcome to see more pictures, more info, and the installation steps on my website:
http://adammelton.com/chipaware.html

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and finally my antenna moved to the roof

radio reception not bad for a sunday

edit: here are two vrs range plots ran about 3 days in parallel - before (attic-antenna) and after (roof-antenna):

edit 2: here is the ads-b receiver. as the antenna sits upon the sat-dish the 15 feet cable ends where the satellite-hub is connected - and that’s where i simply put the raspi at :smiley:

as the site with roof-antenna now runs since a couple of weeks i’m quite happy with the results. especially the range and message-count from higher distances improved to about 800.000-900.000 positions per day with this range spread:

14

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Wow, so many aircraft. Height matters, unobstructed line-of-sight matters!

https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4297/35419846373_7bea951d0c_t.jpg

haha - yes - definitely true! the little hill beside a lake my house sits on top helps much - at least to the west, north and east - but the alps being 25 miles to the south are a limiting factor there. anyways - happy with the result :slight_smile: