what version of raspberry pi?

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Hi

i have just set up a raspberry pi 3 and think its great

what i am wondering is could i use a pi 1 or 2 and set one of them up, what model of pi can be used, i ask because i am thinking about getting a couple of old pi’s setting them up and giving them to friends.

thanks

2

Goofing around with spare parts yesterday, I cobbled together a a test Pi 1 (B+) system using the FA SD card image and I wouldn’t recommend it on that hardware. Go with at least a Pi 2 or 3. The Pi 1 works when overclocked to Turbo but runs 100% CPU at medium setting, and that’s with fewer than 60 planes being tracked.

3

I run a Pi2 here feeding both FA and FR24. My position in Sydney can see me tracking up to 50 planes at up to 250nm range. The Pi2 does it without breaking a sweat, so I can’t see any reason to upgrade it to a Pi3.

4

ditto here,
pi2 with 130 planes tracked & on station at the time I write this post.
cpu 9%, memory 20%,32gb card installed and this is 8% used (never gone above 9% in 1 year running)
Station feeding fa,pf and fr24 using joes script.
My backup station,Pi b+ runs fine also with 8gb card, no issues.

Run everything required including station logging using painless scripted install,

ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/ads-b-receiver-project-setup-scripts-t36532.html

5

Thanks Guys

a PI 2 or 3 it will be

6

I’m running my FA stuff on a Pi2 without a hitch, it runs great, and it never has shut down or hung since I put it in place over 3 months ago.

I have been able to do several upgrades (apt-get update and apt-get upgrade) while it was running and it came back to life in a couple of minutes. It didn’t even affect my streak for how many days I have been up.

I am running the 3.1.0 image with a few of my own tweaks, but they’re miner.

Dave

7

It depends on your plane traffic and your antenna. I have a Pi2 which is running at 90% CPU the whole time. It is picking up 150+ planes a day and 1200 mesaages per second. As you are in Birmingham, UK, you have the potential to collect a lot of traffic. Once you get hooked on ADSB, you’ll want to improve your antenna and setup and it may well overpower a Pi2. The cost of a Pi2 vs Pi3 is minimal so I would go for Pi3. There will be enough power to run other applications alongside ADSB too :wink: :wink:

Alternative might be an Orange Pi http://discussions.flightaware.com/ads-b-flight-tracking-f21/orange-pi-pc-a-15-alternative-to-rpi-2-so-far-so-good-t36356.html

8

I’m running on Pi2 - nowhere near 90%, but since the Pi3 is more or less the same price and is 50% faster and has built in wifi - buy that

PiB (aka Pi1) - not enough oomph to do MLAT

Pi zero might have enough power (just), but would need USB gizmos for WiFi / networking

Pi 2 Busyness


top - 19:38:41 up 3 days,  7:18,  2 users,  load average: 0.44, 0.44, 0.47
Tasks: 109 total,   1 running, 108 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 10.8 us,  1.0 sy,  0.0 ni, 87.9 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.2 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:    947100 total,   298488 used,   648612 free,    63224 buffers
KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 used,        0 free.   154920 cached Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
  496 dump1090  15  -5   31860  13772   2124 S  37.5  1.5   1627:19 dump1090-fa
 8291 piaware   20   0   13016   9708   6252 S   5.6  1.0  13:47.86 fa-mlat-client
 1544 piaware   20   0   22896   9388   5400 S   2.0  1.0  58:20.32 piaware
  389 root      20   0   51804   5452   2168 S   1.6  0.6  77:51.34 pfclient
 1565 piaware   20   0    2828   1696   1532 S   1.0  0.2  31:53.97 faup1090
 8755 pi        20   0    5024   2484   2148 R   1.0  0.3   0:00.15 top