I have ADS-B using a Raspberry Pi and I use Flight Aware software and then I also added Flightradar24 and everything is fine and working.
I wonder if it is possible to download the Virtualradar server and run it without any technical problems. And how does it work? Is there a video or website explaining these steps because my technical background in computers is simple?
What are the pros and cons of using a virtual radar server?
Can Virtualradar Server be downloaded on MacOS?
VRS is basically a Windows application. They have a version that can be run on Linux, using what amounts to an emulation mode called Mono (sort of similar to WINE, if you are familiar with that) - it’s still a Windows app, it’s just running on Linux.
It appears, looking at the Mono project’s website, that it is possible to run Mono on later versions of MacOS, but it won’t be plug n play, and you will probably have to figure most of the VRS part on your own because ADSB is fairly niche and you aren’t likely to find a bunch of people who have already tried it and figured it out.
VRS is a freestanding application that collects data from your dump1090 instance and allows you to do other things with it. A lot of people seem to like its ability to write the received data to a database so that they can use it in other ways.
I run it on a Debian Linux virtual machine and use it for its map views that are slightly different from tar1090 and the default FA maps, and use the data that it collects to feed PlaneFinder. If I was starting from scratch with ADSB and know what I know now, I doubt I would set it up again unless I had already completed every other project that competes for my time.
I run VRS on an RPi 4 and it works fine but you should be aware that it won’t be much to you unless you intend leaving your mac running 24/7 because, as already stated, it gathers information from DUMP1090 or similar.
Thank you for your help 
Well I’ll have to think about whether it’s worth leaving the computer running 24/7.
Thank you
Well, it depends what you are trying to achieve. If you wanted to see what traffic your Pi has captured while you were away from it, there are couple of great add-ons developed by members of this Forum. One is Timelapse, which allows you to replay the day’s flights and another is Heatmap, which shows an aggregated view of where the 'planes your RPi has ‘seen’ that day were and finally, someone here developed a method of logging data to a SQL database so that it can be inspected later.
These are fairly low power things that run on the same RPi.
In addition to what @technodevotee mentioned, there is this project: http://cactusprojects.com/logging-dump1090-fa-to-local-database/
You will need to modify the code in that project somewhat to make things work correctly. If that’s not your bailiwick, just ignore.
On the other hand after you get something like this working, if you’re like me you’ll think – Oh great I have a database of planes that I received. So what – and then just turn it off since all it does is consume power on the RPi !
Hi, you mentioned a couple of add-ons for VRS but did not provide any links. I’ve been looking for them in google but I have not been able to find them, do you have a link to the heatmap and Timelapse add-ons?
Thanks!
They aren’t for VRS, they work in conjunction with Dump1090fa and PiAware.
The post about Heatmap is here: https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/signal-strength-heatmap/53109
and the post about Timelapse is here:https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/timelapse1090/50630