Brand new here - first post. I’m interested in setting up an ADS-B tracking station. Is there a consensus on which RaspberryPi version to use? FlightAware recommends the 3, 4, or Zero W. Also, what memory - 2, 4, 8GB?
Or… if there’s a recent thread that addresses these questions, can you point me that way?
Thanks much.
Tim
I brought up my first ADS-B tracking system in March of this year and started with the RPi Zero. It worked pretty well but I am in a busy air traffic area of central Florida and the messaging of the system started to overwhelm the processor and I was getting CPU utilization warnings. I just recently upgraded to the RPi 4 with the 8gig memory. I no longer have CPU utilization issues and I am enjoying all of the expanded onboard connectivity it provides. USB and hard wire ethernet direct!
I use a Raspberry Pi 4 with 2GB RAM. Might be considered somewhat of an overkill for just ADS-B. However you then have capability to do other things like ACARS VDL2. If you use passive cooling with a heatsink case (no fan) temperature stays around 42 Deg C. Hope this helps.
I use a Pi4 4Gb with SSD. I use docker and have 24 containers (apps) running including ADS-B.
It copes fine (see performance stats below).
It runs warmer than I’d like but never goes above 60 degrees in a passively cooled case
Here are the containers (apps) and yesterdays pi stats to give a sense of capacity
Finally it depends what else you want to do with it.
For just running Flightaware and other feeders even a Zero W with 512 kB is sufficient.
In case you are planning to use an Airspy Stick, it would run with a Raspberry 3, but the CPU usage will be pretty high.
For using the regular Flightaware stick, it doesn’t matter.
I use a Raspberry Pi Model B, the first one from 2012, not the Pi 3, 4, zero etc… Just the “Raspberry Pi 1, Model B revision”
It can be had on ebay for around £15 / $19 USD.
FYI. I run a RPi 4 with 8 g with ADS-B only and the max core temp averages 32.1 C cooling it directly with a ultra quiet fan powered from a separate USB power source. RPi 4 is housed in an aluminum heat sink hard case.
Now that a) you just burn an image, and b) the RPI4 - 8GB are apparently the default available board, I bought one, burned the image, hadda add the wifi, and as I already had an account - PRESTO! It worked. Either I didn’t understand it was a complete image or they just made it available in the last year so it’s up and running. I don’t want to have any lag or load so the RPI4-8GB with a nice case and power supply is the real deal. The wifi worked “right the first time”
QUESTION FOLKS~ Has anyone here built an ADS-B receiver using a PC ? I only ask as I have two new in-the-box laptops. Running Windows 11. I would greatly appreciate any help. SORRY FOR BEING A LITTLE OFF TOPIC!!
If you want to do so, you should consider using Linux on them, makes the setup a lot easier.
Beside that it’s the same as for any other x86_64 device.
Be aware that not all scripts are available for this architecture
Are the devices supposed to run it dedicated just feeding? Would be a little to overpowered.
To me, Raspberry with single cores (Raspberry 1, Zero) are a bit underpowered.
4-core raspis (2, Zero2) are just a bit overpowered, but a nice fit.
I may just regret that USB ports are a bit too close from each other on Zeros, preventing simple use of micro-USB to USB with power on the other port.
I currently run an Orange Pi Zero (quad code) and a Raspi Zero2, loads are around 1.
Use of USB extensions provide significant relief from the RPi physical port congestion. The extensions also provide some physical port isolation that uncouples some of the heat transfer between the Pi and connected component devices.
That’s why i was running my Airspy USB Stick via Cable. The device gets pretty hot, especially in summer and with a cable you isolate it from the Raspberry device in terms of termperature.
I was surprised to see the amount of heat that was being heat sinked to the USB antenna dongle from the RPi when it was direct connected to the Pi. Evidence of the CPU temperature change was very dramatic as evidenced by the 1090 Graphs program that tracks the CPU temperature profile.
I ran PiAware for a few months on an Ubuntu 22.04 laptop, it worked perfectly but was using considerably more electricity than a Pi. I also disliked having to disconnect PiAware when I wanted to use the laptop for other purposes/OS’s.
Having also used a Pi Zero (fine for just PiAware, but can struggle if you want to run other things i.e. Graphs1090) and a Pi 4b, I now use a Pi Zero 2W which seems ideal to leave on 24/7 as a purely PiAware device.
I’m using a 0W for my ADS-B feeder. It runs at about 60% cpu, which is fine. It’s dedicated to the task since it’s no good for any of the other things I’d run on a Pi.
A while ago I did some experiments with tuning compiler flags to the host processor. I got a single-core Allwinner R8 (NextThingCo CHIP) to simultaneously run dump1090 with one RTLSDR and acarsdec decoding 8 channels from another RTLSDR, and still had about 15% cpu free. Very much an experimental config that required a lot of tweaking, and the resulting binaries were not portable to other ARM systems - you’d have to do all the benchmarking and tuning on every processor you’d want this setup to run on.
I also have a cluster of raspi 3b+ each with two rtlsdrs which I use for various things. rtl_433, dump1090, acarsdec, vdlm2dec, trying every rtl_sdr-related project on github, and generally streaming I/Q samples over the network to gnuradio applications running on more powerful machines. Heat is a very slight issue, but the cluster is arranged so that the receivers are sticking up in the air and convection seems to work well enough.
It would be interesting to see a photo of that, if you are okay posting one. Just curious!
I’m running a Pi 3B+. Pretty sure it has 4GB but I could be wrong.
Anyway, I’m feeding Flight Aware, Radar Box and FR24 using the Flight Aware blue dongle and I don’t think it’s cracked 40% CPU usage unless I was installing or upgrading something. I am thinking of upgrading my SDR to an Airspy Mini with a LNA, but some here have said that it might not have enough “umph” to run that well.
I used to run a Pi 2B+ with 1GB with both the ADS-B and UAT-978 dongles and that had no issues, but I didn’t have Graphs 1090 on that one to see what rate the processor was running.
It’s nothing special. A raspberry pi “rack” from amazon, standing on one end with the USB ports sticking up instead of in the tower orientation.
A few years ago I 3D printed a rack storage similar to that for about $10 in materials. It currently holds 6 RPi, each are powered by POE+ to cut down on the wall warts.
