Are there major improvements in the current version compared to v3.6.3? Over a year ago, I went through the exercise of getting piaware running on a Linux VM on an old version of VMware Player (runs on Windows 32 bit) running on an old ASUS Eee PC 1005PEB Netbook. The summary of how I built it is here:
I have never updated that version of piaware, which is v3.6.3. I recently upgraded the RTL-SDR dongle from an old NooElec R820T to a FlightAware RTL-SDR (orange, without the bandpass filter) v1.1. I’m using an indoor homebrew collinear antenna based on this design: Coaxial Collinear Antenna for ADS-B.
I have noticed some improvement with the new dongle, but not that much. I’m sure my main limiting factor is the indoor placement of my antenna and that if I were to get the FlightAware antenna and mount it outside, I’d see a huge improvement. Running piaware on an RPi 3 or 4 would probably help also. It would certainly be more energy efficient. But the Netbook has an Intel Atom N450 CPU, which doesn’t use a lot of power.
My question is, are there any major improvements in the current version of piaware compared to the version I’m running? I’m not sure I can reconstruct the process I went through to create the image, though it would be a good thing for me to refresh that knowledge. It looks like a number of things have changed.
See my reply in one of the other threads. I have my Raspberry connected via a remote access power jack which can measure the consumption.
The Raspberry 3B feeding data only (no other tasks running) is consuming approx 3 kWh per month
I would definitively go with the new version. There’s a new Piaware Image available which works straight out of the box. Flash the SD card, put it in the Raspberry, some configuration → done
Thanks, guys. Version 3.6.3 seems very stable and works well, but OK I don’t mind going through this exercise again. But as @abcd567 may recall, rather than purchase an RPi I would like to start with a lightweight version of RPi Desktop (what version of RPi Desktop should I use?), and then clone the piaware, dump1090, and whatever else I need sources and build it. That way I can run it in a 32-bit Linux VM that only needs 512 MB memory.
Last time I tried doing this I found that the build instructions on github were lacking in detail, but thankfully @abcd567 told me all the steps I needed to follow. I suspect that some of those steps may need updating to build the latest version. But I will try, and will ask questions if I get stuck. Thanks.
I have not tried latest version of piaware (3.8.1) on latest version of Raspbian Desktop (Buster), so cannot tell you with surety.
However I feel that if you upgrade both the OS and piaware/dump1090-fa, most likely the method for option “Debian 10.3 (Buster) amd64” in following post will apply:
Great!! Thanks very much for verifying your excellent instructions.I will build piaware v3.8.1 on Debian 10 (“Buster”). As you may recall, last year I went through the exercise of building piaware v3.6.3 on Debian 9 and have been running it on VMware Player 6 (old version, which runs on 32-bit Windows) on Windows 10 32-bit (“Starter Edition”) on an ASUS Eee PC Netbook 1005PEB (circa 2009) with an Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz CPU (single core) with 2GB memory. I find it fascinating that this wimpy platform has enough horsepower to run piaware reasonably well. It started out as an experiment, but I’ve been using it without any issues other than Win10 has an annoying habit of updating itself which forces reboots, and then I have to restart the VM. You provided the brilliant insight last year which was – get the VM memory size down to 512MB. That was the key to success! Again, many thanks for all your help. Maybe you should “pin” your handy-dandy how-to-build the current release of piaware instructions in this discussion group, so they are always easy to find. I suspect others would find them useful. Not everyone is running piaware on an RPi.
@abcd567:
I followed all your instructions (except Step 5, since I don’t plan to use dump978). For some reason, it’s not working.
pi@raspberry:~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:2832 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2832U DVB-T
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0e0f:0003 VMware, Inc. Virtual Mouse
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
pi@raspberry:~ $ sudo piaware-status
PiAware master process (piaware) is running with pid 2420.
PiAware ADS-B client (faup1090) is not running.
PiAware ADS-B UAT client (faup978) is not running (disabled by configuration settings)
PiAware mlat client (fa-mlat-client) is not running.
Local ADS-B receiver (dump1090) is not running.
no program appears to be listening for ES connections on port 30005.
faup1090 is NOT connected to the ADS-B receiver.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.
got 'couldn't open socket: connection refused'
dump1090 is NOT producing data on localhost:30005.
I tried several restarts of piaware and reboots, and unplugging/replugging in the dongle. Nothing works. Any suggestions?
Jul 12 06:49:51 raspberry systemd[1]: Started FlightAware ADS-B uploader.
Jul 12 06:49:52 raspberry piaware[4721]: creating pidfile /run/piaware/piaware.pid
Jul 12 06:49:52 raspberry piaware[4721]: ****************************************************
Jul 12 06:49:52 raspberry piaware[4721]: piaware version 3.8.1 is running, process ID 4721
Jul 12 06:49:52 raspberry piaware[4721]: your system info is: Linux raspberry 4.19.0-9-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2+deb10u1 (2020-06-07) i686 GNU/Linux
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry piaware[4721]: Connecting to FlightAware adept server at piaware.flightaware.com/1200
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry piaware[4721]: Connection with adept server at piaware.flightaware.com/1200 established
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry piaware[4721]: TLS handshake with adept server at piaware.flightaware.com/1200 completed
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry piaware[4721]: FlightAware server certificate validated
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry piaware[4721]: encrypted session established with FlightAware
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry sudo[4740]: piaware : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=list /bin/netstat --program --tcp --wide --all --numeric
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry sudo[4741]: piaware : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/netstat --program --tcp --wide --all --numeric
Jul 12 06:49:54 raspberry sudo[4741]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul 12 06:49:55 raspberry sudo[4741]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jul 12 06:49:55 raspberry sudo[4747]: piaware : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/netstat --program --tcp --wide --all --numeric
Jul 12 06:49:55 raspberry sudo[4747]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul 12 06:49:55 raspberry sudo[4747]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jul 12 06:49:56 raspberry piaware[4721]: no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30005 for 4 seconds, next check in 60s
Jul 12 06:49:56 raspberry piaware[4721]: UAT support disabled by local configuration setting: uat-receiver-type
Jul 12 06:49:56 raspberry piaware[4721]: logged in to FlightAware as user guest
Jul 12 06:50:27 raspberry piaware[4721]: 0 msgs recv'd from dump1090; 0 msgs sent to FlightAware
Jul 12 06:50:56 raspberry sudo[5088]: piaware : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/netstat --program --tcp --wide --all --numeric
Jul 12 06:50:56 raspberry sudo[5088]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul 12 06:50:56 raspberry sudo[5088]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jul 12 06:50:56 raspberry piaware[4721]: no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30005 for 64 seconds, next check in 60s
Jul 12 06:51:56 raspberry sudo[5365]: piaware : TTY=unknown ; PWD=/ ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/netstat --program --tcp --wide --all --numeric
Jul 12 06:51:56 raspberry sudo[5365]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Jul 12 06:51:56 raspberry sudo[5365]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root
Jul 12 06:51:56 raspberry piaware[4721]: no ADS-B data program seen listening on port 30005 for 124 seconds, next check in 60s
pi@raspberry:~ $ cat /etc/default/dump1090-fa
# dump1090-fa configuration
# This is sourced by /usr/share/dump1090-fa/start-dump1090-fa as a
# shellscript fragment.
# If you are using a PiAware sdcard image, this config file is regenerated
# on boot based on the contents of piaware-config.txt; any changes made to this
# file will be lost.
# dump1090-fa won't automatically start unless ENABLED=yes
ENABLED=yes
RECEIVER_OPTIONS="--device-index 00001090 --gain -10 --ppm 0"
DECODER_OPTIONS="--max-range 360 --fix"
NET_OPTIONS="--net --net-heartbeat 60 --net-ro-size 1300 --net-ro-interval 0.2 --net-ri-port 0 --net-ro-port 30002 --net-sbs-port 30003 --net-bi-port 30004,30104 --net-bo-port 30005"
JSON_OPTIONS="--json-location-accuracy 1"
My feeder stats page is showing up all RED. Is that because it takes awhile for a new station’s data to show up? I updated my feeder id on my feeder, but the server isn’t seeing it.
Mlat is not running? My location was manually set.
pi@raspberry:~ $ sudo piaware-status
PiAware master process (piaware) is running with pid 13966.
PiAware ADS-B client (faup1090) is running with pid 14011.
PiAware ADS-B UAT client (faup978) is not running (disabled by configuration settings)
PiAware mlat client (fa-mlat-client) is not running.
Local ADS-B receiver (dump1090-fa) is running with pid 13915.
dump1090-fa (pid 13915) is listening for ES connections on port 30005.
faup1090 is connected to the ADS-B receiver.
piaware is connected to FlightAware.
dump1090 is producing data on localhost:30005.
DOH!! I was using the wrong feeder ID.
All is working now!! Update complete!! Woohoo!! Thanks, @abcd567!!!
Only weird thing was, why did I have to change my dongle serial number to 1000 instead of 1090 (only difference I ran into in step 6.2 of your instructions) in /etc/default/dump1090-fa?
If you have NOT installed dump978-fa, then neither change dongle’s serial number by command rtl_eeprom -s xxxxxxxxx, nor make any changes in default setting --device-index 0 in file /etc/default/dump1090-fa
)
