How to Feed Data to Multiple Sites - A Brief Guide

[abcd567]

@wiedehopf:
Any of the following two settings are valid. Personally I prefer Beast setting.

"Host/IP = 127.0.0.1:30002" is used with "Receiver = AVR(TCP)".

"Host/IP = 127.0.0.1:30005" is used with "Receiver: ModeS Beast (TCP)".

FR24 Settings with dump1090-fa or mut for multiple feed by Pi.png

[wiedehopf]

Hi abcd thanks for that great guide!

I just set the fr24 port to 30005 instead of 30002 and it started working.

It kinda makes sense because we just set the fr24 to Beast tcp input but 30002 is the raw output of dump1090 and 30005 is the beast output.
Or am I confusing this?

[TomNJerry]

This is a very comprehensive, useful and important guide. Deserves to be made sticky.

[abcd567]

The Pi24 image has a tmpfs entry for /var/log folder in it's /etc/fstab file.
This entry causes deletion of contents of /var/log folder on reboot.

Pi24 image

cat /etc/fstab
proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
/dev/mmcblk0p1  /boot           vfat    defaults          0       2
/dev/mmcblk0p2  /               ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1
[COLOR="#FF0000"]tmpfs   /var/log    tmpfs    defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755,size=100m    0 0[/COLOR]

Update April 10, 2018
Above comments about Pi24 were valid for the version current at the time this post was originally written. These comments are no more applicable to the current version Pi24-2.0.0.

Raspbian Jessie image
In Respbian Jessie image tmpfs entry is not there, and that is why the contents of folder /var/log are not deleted on reboot

cat /etc/fstab
proc            /proc           proc    defaults          0       0
PARTUUID=b2dfebce-01  /boot           vfat    defaults          0       2
PARTUUID=b2dfebce-02  /               ext4    defaults,noatime  0       1
# a swapfile is not a swap partition, no line here
#   use  dphys-swapfile swap[on|off]  for that

Piaware 3.5.0 image
In Piaware image, tmpfs entry is there, but the folder /var/log is not associated with tmpfs entry, and that is why the contents of folder /var/log are not deleted on reboot

cat /etc/fstab
/dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults 0 2
/dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext4 errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 1
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,nodev,nosuid 0 0

[abcd567]

Last update, April 14, 2018:
The problem and solution given below existed in the Pi24 at the time this post was originally written.
The current version Pi24-2.0.0 does not have this problem, and the solution given below is neither needed nor applicable to it.


The installation of Planefinder and Flightaware feeders on Pi24 does not work OK for following reasons:

• The Planefinder feeder, which works ok on install, crashes when Pi is rebooted, and fails to start even manually by command "sudo systemctl restart pfclient".
• Flightaware MLAT results feed-back is not displayed on map. The built-in dump1090 (MR) does not have facility to keep MLAT feedback separate from the data received by DVB-T and combine it only on map display.
  
  This facility is available in dump1090-mutability and dump1090-fa. Unfortunately if dump1090-mutability or dump1090-fa is installed on Pi24 image, map display stops. The reason is that both dump mutability and dump fa display map through lighttpd, which fails to start when istalled on Pi24. Even giving command "sudo systemctl restart lighttpd" does not succees to start it.

[S O L V E D]:
Failure of lighttpd and pfclient on Pi24 image.

sudo systemctl status lighttpd -l

raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started Lighttpd Daemon.
raspberrypi lighttpd[631]: 2017-06-17 20:24:34: (log.c.118) [COLOR="#FF0000"]opening errorlog '/var/log/lighttpd/error.log' 
failed: No such file or directory[/COLOR]
raspberrypi systemd[1]: lighttpd.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=255/n/a
raspberrypi systemd[1]:[COLOR="#FF0000"] Unit lighttpd.service entered failed state.[/COLOR]

sudo systemctl status pfclient -l

Starting pfclient: pfclient/etc/init.d/pfclient: 35: /etc/init.d/pfclient: [color="#ff0000"]cannot create /var/log/pfclient/error.log: 
Directory nonexistent[/color]
raspberrypi pfclient[539]: [color="#ff0000"]failed![/color]

Manually created following folders and files:

folder /var/log/lighttpd and file /var/log/lighttpd/error.log

folder /var/log/pfclient and file /var/log/pfclient/error.log

On reboot found all these folder and files are deleted, and lighttpd and pfclient again failed.

WORKAROUND
Arranged to recreate needed folders & files at boot, by adding following code to file rc.local just before last line (exit0).

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

#added following lines at the end of file, just before exit0

mkdir -p /var/log/lighttpd
touch /var/log/lighttpd/error.log                
chmod 666 /var/log/lighttpd/error.log            
systemctl restart lighttpd

mkdir -p /var/log/pfclient                       
touch /var/log/pfclient/error.log
chmod 666 /var/log/pfclient/error.log
systemctl restart pfclient

Now lighttpd, dump1090-mutability, Piaware data feeder and Piaware MLAT feed-back plane's display on map, are all working OK on Pi24 image.
.

[abcd567]

Last update - April 12, 2019:

It has become very common that users want to install multiple feeders to feed multiple sites like FlightRadar24, Flightaware, Planefinder, Adsbexchange, Radarbox24, etc etc.

Basically feeding to any site requires following software:
(1) An Operating System like Noobs, Raspbian, Ubuntu etc.
(2) A Decoder software like dump1090 MR, dump1090-mutability, dump1090-fa, ModeSDeco2 etc.
(3) An exclusive data feeder for each site like fr24feed (FlightRadar24), Piaware feeder (Flightaware), PFClient (Planefinder), rbfeeder (RadarBox24) etc. The data feeder of a Flightaware & Adsbexchange (which provides feedback of MLAT results) also install their MLAT Clients.

Various Options to Install Software

OPTION (A): Pi24 image from Flightradar24.com

1. Burn microSD card with Pi24 image. This image contains: Raspbian Lite OS + dump1090-mutability v1.14 + fr24 data feeder.
   
   
2. Slip out microSD card from card reader, slip into RPi and powerup.
   
   
3. Signup by command sudo fr24feed --signup.
   
   
4. Configure FR24 Feeder as shown below
   
   
5. Install feeders from respective sites:
   Flightaware (Install piaware data feeder only. Do not install dump1090-fa)
   Planefinder
   Radarbox24
   
   
   NOTE: The Pi24 image sometimes mounts as "read-only file system". As a result installation of other feeders fails and gives erro messages. In this case first change read-only file system to read & write system by following command, then try again to install other feeders.
   

   sudo mount -o remount,rw /

OPTION (B): Raspbian image from Raspberrypi.org + dump1090-mutability ver 1.15~dev

1. Burn microSD card with Raspbian Lite image. This image contains only Operating system.
   
   
2. Enable SSH: While the microSD card is still in the card reader of your Laptop/Desktop, in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) click on drive letter of the microSD card (labelled boot) to open it. It will open folder /boot which has many files & few folders. In the folder /boot, create a new text file and name it ssh.
   
   
3. Slip out microSD card from card reader, slip into RPi and powerup.
   
   
4. Install dump1090-mutability
   
   
5. Install feeders from respective sites:
   Flightradar24
   Flightaware (Install piaware date feeder only. Do not install dump1090-fa)
   Planefinder
   Radarbox24

OPTION (C): Raspbian image from Raspberrypi.org + dump1090-fa

1. Burn microSD card with Raspbian Lite image. This image contains only Operating system.
   
   
2. Enable SSH: While the microSD card is still in the card reader of your Laptop/Desktop, in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) click on drive letter of the microSD card (labelled boot) to open it. It will open folder /boot which has many files & few folders. In the folder /boot, create a new text file and name it ssh.
   
   
3. Slip out microSD card from card reader, slip into RPi and powerup.
   
   
4. Install dump1090-fa
   
   
5. Install feeders from respective sites:
   Flightradar24
   Flightaware
   Planefinder
   Radarbox24

OPTION (D): Piaware image from Flightaware.com

1. Burn microSD card with Piaware SD card image. This image contains: Raspbian Lite OS + dump1090-fa + Piaware data feeder.
   
   
2. Enable SSH: While the microSD card is still in the card reader of your Laptop/Desktop, in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac) click on drive letter of the microSD card (labelled boot) to open it. It will open folder /boot which has many files & few folders. In the folder /boot, create a new text file and name it ssh.
   
   
3. Slip out microSD card from card reader, slip into RPi and powerup.
   
   
4. Install feeders from respective sites:
   Flightradar24
   Planefinder
   Radarbox24

FR24 FEEDER CONFIGURATION

OPTION-1:
If NO external decoder (like dump1090 MR, dump1090-mutability, dump1090-fa, or ModeSDeco2 etc) is installed,
and you want to use dump1090-mutability v1.14 provided by Pi24, then:

• Select "Receiver: DVB-T". See screenshot below.
  
• Set "Process Arguments: --net --lat xx.xxxx --lon yy.yyyy".
  
• To see map, in your Browser type address http://<IP of Pi>/dump1090/gmap.html
  
• If Flightaware feeder Piaware is also installed, you will need to enable MLAT input to port 30104. To do this, set "Process Arguments: --net --net-bi-port 30104 --lat xx.xxxx --lon yy.yyyy"
  
• To change gain of Receiver (DVB-T) from default "max" (=49.6), add --gain to process arguments like this: "Process Arguments: --net --net-bi-port 30104 --lat xx.xxxx --lon yy.yyyy --gain zz" , where zz is the gain value you want to set.

FR24 settings - Integral dump1090.png

OPTION-2:
If an external decoder (like dump1090 MR, dump1090-mutability, dump1090-fa, or ModeSDeco2) is installed, then select:

"Receiver: ModeS Beast (TCP)" and "HOST/IP: 127.0.0.1:30005"
OR
"Receiver: AVR(TCP)" and "HOST/IP: 127.0.0.1:30002".

See screenshot below.

fr24feed setting BEAST-TCP using dump1090-fa or dump1090-mut v1.15.png . fr24feed setting AVR-TCP using dump1090-fa or dump1090-mut v1.15.png


BLOCK DIAGRAMS
FR24 Block Diagram - Receiver DVBT-2.png . FR24 Block Diagram - Receiver AVR or Beast-2.png