RPI3 piaware 3.7.1 sd-image - 978 UAT only -- not displaying on SkyView

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Hi,

I have an RPI3 set up for 978 UAT only. It’s running piaware 3.7.1. It’s on a very mediocre antenna system right now, so I get very very few planes. however, I do not know that I’m seeing planes.

  1. The /skyview978 interface never seems to report a plane being seen
  2. I have modesmixer2 connecting to TCP 30978 of dump978 in an attempt to send the results to my VRS server (which also is not seeing any planes)

However, I have modesmixer2 logging, and modesmixer2 is seeing the raw data. If I take the raw data logged by modesmixer2 and pipe it through uat2txt, it clearly is showing aircraft addresses and lat/long / elevation and all of that stuff.

So I’m curious as to why the Skyview interface might not be displaying any of it when it comes up. Dump978 is working, and it’s clear that TCP 30978 is providing some sort of data that modesmixer2 logs. I’m just not seeing anything on skyview978 or VRS. Modesmixer2 is sending to my VRS via avr:1.2.3.4:30978 and the VRS receiver is set up as AVR or Beast on 30978.

Oh - and FA indicates that I’ve sent a couple of planes (4, wow) since last night – https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/mtindor#stats-106448

So, if FA is getting the planes, and my modesmixer2 is getting the planes, I’m at a loss for why they wouldn’t display on skyview978 or on my VRS.

Any ideas?

Mike

2

You are probably only seeing them for very short times.

40 positions is maybe 40*5 seconds = 2-3 minutes or even less that you saw that aircraft.

If you are using the yellow dongle or some sort of amplifier, reduce the gain to 30.

3

I’m not sure that modesmixer is UAT aware at all. The data on 30978 is raw UAT messages, a different message format to Mode S messages.

4

That might be true (only seeing them for a couple of minutes of time), but I didn’t think that would be an issue. The fact that planes are being seen by Dump978 is promising. I just don’t know why they wouldn’t show up in Skyview978. I think you were suggesting that maybe I just wasn’t watching Skyview during the brief periods that the plane came by – and you might be right. But I would have still expected Skyview to report something other than “History: 0 positions” . Because there were definitely positions of aircraft (including a Goodyear plane) in the raw data.

Mike

5

I thought the data from dump978 was AVR format ? No? If not, I’m guessing there must be some way to pipe that through another [existing] program to turn it into Mode S messages.

Based upon what you are saying, it sounds like I must in some way use uat2esnt to convert those messages from TCP 30978 to Mode S messages. But, assuming I figure out how to do that, what format will those Mode S messages be in? Beast / AVR / something else ?

I still don’t know why Skyview978 isn’t displaying the planes. I understand [based upon what you say] why VRS doesn’t know what to do with them.

Mike

6

Ok, now that I’ve read the Dump978 readme for the fifth time, I see that I’d need to use uat2esnt to convert to Mode S (AVR format) and then send that AVR format to VRS.

I’ll have to fiddle around. Thanks

Mike

7

Piaware, dump1090-fa, and dump978-fa (all ver 3.7.1) and ModeSMixer2 running on RPi 2 / Buster

(1) Normal Setting (port 30005)

cat /home/pi/mm2/mm2.sh

#!/bin/sh
/home/pi/mm2/modesmixer2 \
 --inConnectId 127.0.0.1:30005:ADSB \
 --inConnectId 127.0.0.1:30105:MLAT \
 --web 8787 \
 --location 43.xxxx:-79.xxxx \

image
image756×636 290 KB

(2) Revised Setting (port 30978)

cat /home/pi/mm2/mm2.sh
#!/bin/sh
/home/pi/mm2/modesmixer2 \
 --inConnectId 127.0.0.1:30978:UAT978 \
 --web 8787 \
 --location 43.xxxx:-79.xxxx \

The max range curve is left-over from previous setting of inConnect from port 30005

image
image758×639 159 KB

1 Like
8

I’m running single-dongle, no dump1090-fa – only dump978-fa, on an sd-image of piaware 3.7.1. So the only things running are piaware, dump978, and faup978. So the only choice I have is to connect to TCP 30978, fetch the data and then massage it and find a way to distribute it.

I’m going to look over what you posted some more. Although I do want to ask – is there any way for you to even tell in Skyview whether you are seeing something obtained from dump978 vs dump1090 ? In my case, I only have dump978 running, so I know that if something shows up on my Skyview it’s coming from UAT.

Ok I see what you’are doing – using the web interface in modesmixer2. I never thought of doing that. I’m going to see what happens. Although I suspect that obj is probably right that modesmixer2 is likely UAT-unaware and so might not show anything.

Mike

9

In skyview it is occaional. A plane appears, stays for 5~10 minutes, then disappears. If I am watching Skyview978 during these 10 minutes I see it else nothing.

Here is screenshot when I was lucky to have a UAT Plane as I opened SkyView978 about 5 hours ago:

image
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I have installed graphs which continuously monitor traffic and plot on a graph. By checking the graphs, I know if there was a UAT plane flying, and at what time.

image

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image

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image

1 Like
10

It is a bit like AVR in terms of framing, but the actual message contents are completely different to 1090 - it’s a different protocol altogether.

Currently, there’s no unified skyview, so if you are running both 978 and 1090 then you will have two skyviews at different URLs.

11

Those are just the positions in the memory of the web interface.
The web interface completely removes planes and its positions if they haven’t been seen for a couple of minutes.

That history count is a leftover debug tool, it correlates with the webinterface performance somewhat.

For getting UAT planes into VRS see this post (or the entire thread)
UAT Translation from Dump978-fa - #11 by KC1IUC

Anyway if you want some more details on when you saw planes on UAT, use my graphs:
GitHub - wiedehopf/graphs1090: Graphs for readsb / dump1090-fa / dump1090 (based on dump1090-tools by mutability)
UAT graphs are at the very bottom.

2 Likes
12

That is what I use.
Only 1 aircraft during last 24 hrs :frowning:

dump1090-localhost-aircraft_978-24h-1

.
dump1090-localhost-messages_978-24h

.

dump1090-localhost-range_978-24h

13

Sometimes you don’t even see the whole plane…
(maybe the tail, maybe a wing (just joking)).
Here’s my graph:
image
Interesting to just see the traffic though.

image

1 Like
14

I think i’m just gonna change that graph to use the MAX propagation.
That way it should only be complete aircraft :wink:

Edit: Actually that would introduce other problems :confused:
You’ll have to live with half aircraft.
It’s an indication that you saw the aircraft one minute and didn’t see it the next minute.
So spotty, not constant reception of one aircraft.

15

Sweet. Thank you so much. Scott’s solution worked pretty darned well for UAT. Two minutes after setting that up, I saw this.

Mike

sweet
sweet905×459 86.3 KB

1 Like
16

The current graph is just fine no need to change. With really low flying aircraft the range can be quite limited, often seeing them at 30-40NM at 3000ft when trees, buildings etc can block line-of-sight. My antenna could be higher… and will be… eventually.