How Flightradar24 treats people who have been sending data to them for several years

[renekm]

Hello everyone. I wanted to share with you information about what happened to me and at the same time warn you. I am passionate like many of you. For several years I have been sending data from hand-purchased and made receivers to Flightradar24. I bear all costs myself, starting with equipment, through internet fees, electricity and other matters. Unfortunately, for a few years I have been a bit worse when it comes to finances. I maintain two receivers. One had a breakdown six months ago and the other a week ago. I was able to remove this first failure and it was not necessary to purchase new equipment. Unfortunately, if the second receiver fails, the failure is serious and requires the replacement of the entire Raspberry Pi platform. I thought I'd turn to Flighrtadar for help. I would like to add that I have never applied for a receiver from them, even though both locations where I have receivers are located very high, above 1200 meters above sea level. When they worked, they achieved very good results and occupied the 1st and 2nd place in the ranking for the whole of Poland and about 30 of this place in the world ranking. Do you know what answer I got? That they can't help me because it's against company policy!!! They prefer to spend money on more receivers in places much worse than my location. They earn money on advertising and are unable to fund a receiver for a person who has been sending them data from two receivers continuously since 2018. In a situation like this, I miss anything. I will repair these receivers at my expense and upload data to my own VirtualRadar Server. Now you see what it looks like. You send them data for free, give them your equipment, commitment, but when a crisis situation arises, you get a "kick in the ass". Be careful who you send your data to.

For curiosity, I will give you links to my receivers. At the moment one of them (the better one) is not working. He was second with a slightly worse range coverage. They are: T-EPKK17 and T-EPKK18

[RonnyTa]

Hi renekm,
sorry to read your experience. I just started feeding myself today. Since the Raspberry`s seemed too expensive I tried an OrangePi Zero (most simple version selling for ~25€ in Germany from Aliexpress). I run it with Armbian 22.11 Bullseye OS and applied the FR24 SW (no need to add/install any dump1900 before). The OrangePi has WLAN so it is easy to link with you network. Let me know if you need more...

[renekm]

I know the subject but I rather prefer to stay with Raspberry Pi 2 B+ or Raspberry Pi3. A few years ago these microcomputers were quite cheap. Currently, prices are very high and in Poland you have to pay about EUR 80-90 for a new Pi 3 computer. Used ones are cheaper but not sure how long they will last. A few months ago I had to replace Raspberry on one receiver - it happened after a thunderstorm. The Flightaware dongle (the blue one) also suffered, but I managed to fix it. All in all, this one receiver worked flawlessly for so long. It's been working since the repair. Unfortunately, a few days ago, Pi 3 probably died in the second receiver and a replacement will be necessary. I thought maybe Flightradar could help because they give receivers to different people for free every month, so why not give them to the person who has been sending data to them for several years ? Unfortunately, as you can see, I was very wrong about this.

That's why I wrote this post to show what it looks like. You try, you will enter this topic, but in fact Flightradar has you "somewhere" as a feeder. Is it worth sending data? Even if it's a passion?

I counted that for this passion of mine, i.e. both receivers, I spent over 400 EUR on the equipment alone. I currently cannot afford to continue repairing and maintaining all of this.

As for the software itself, I prefer Piaware. This works very well and you can send to several ADS-B sites.

Regards

[SoNic67]

Nobody forced you to spend those money. It's a hobby, and FR24 gave you access to their product in exchange.
Now you want a new Pi3 for that... when a Zero will suffice (I have used an OrangePi myself). It seems a greedy request to me. There are plenty of feeders in your area, that send the data for free. Nobody cares that you were "#1" or such in Poland, that's just for your amusement.

[renekm]

Did you write this seriously? What product did Flightradar give me? I don't think you're talking about access to the Premium subscription, which can be obtained by anyone who makes the simplest receiver on a Chinese DVB-T dongle and puts the antenna out the window. My receivers are professionally made. They have external antennas, a filter and a blue flightaware dongle. The platform is a Raspberry Pi 3. This is necessary for it to work sensibly with such a load. Have you seen my receiver stats? Have you seen what area they cover? These are not amateur builds. Each receiver has a backup power supply and the antenna is mounted on the roof at a high altitude. The system on which the receiver works is Piaware from Flightaware. And this is where we come to what Flightaware gave me. It gave me the operating system the receiver is running on. Using Piaware allows you to send data also to other services such as Flightradar24. And that's what I've been doing for several years. But there was one serious failure and I thought that Flightradar would take me seriously and, for example, send its receiver to be installed at my location. But they ignored me even though they ship receivers to less significant locations every day. It's a shame you have such naive thinking. My entry showed how much Flightradar respects its users, who volunteer data from their receivers, take care of them, and pay for Internet access. I found out what it's like. I fixed my receiver today. I am waiting two more days for a response from Flightradar. If I don't receive it, I stop sending data from receivers to them. As a curiosity, I will add that I contacted Flightaware, described the situation to them and they are initially interested in sending me their professional receivers. And to be clear. I didn't ask Flightradar for any device, I didn't ask for anything. I described the situation and suggested that if they give away receivers, why can't they do it in my case, where I simply don't have the means to repair the devices from which I provided them with data for several years. During this time, they earned money on advertising, etc. And they earn money for each person who sends them data. The difference is that my receivers do not cover a few kilometers, only a few countries in Central Europe. See the screenshot for yourself. And I'm just interested in the fact that my receivers have the first places. This proves how well they are made and in what good locations they are located.

[Lima]

Hi renekm,
Since the Raspberry`s seemed too expensive I tried an OrangePi Zero (most simple version selling for ~25€ in Germany from Aliexpress). I run it with Armbian 22.11 Bullseye OS and applied the FR24 SW (no need to add/install any dump1900 before). The OrangePi has WLAN so it is easy to link with you network. Let me know if you need more...

Hello, I've some questions about the Orange PI
1.- How does it runs?, I've read that is not as cold as Raspberry, kind of hot side?
2.- Still runs fine?.

I want to upgrade from OSX to Raspberry, but since the prices are so expensive I'm tempted to get one of these OrangePi.

Is there any place to follow a tutorial from scratch?, I'm a totally Raspberrian ignorant

Thanks

[RonnyTa]

Hi Lima. So far it runs flawless since about a month: https://www.flightradar24.com/accoun...tats/?id=25320.
Since the temperature on my attic is below 10°C I run it completely without cooling surfaces. No single crash so far, CPU at 23°C, with 15% system load, more or less independent from number of aircraft seen. I use a simple DVB-T stick (BUT ensure it has an R820T2 Tuner!). I built my own simple antenna from coax cable (8 pieces of ~11cm length stuck together) which improved the number of aircraft seen and the max. radius (~170nm) after I hung it under the topmost point on my attic (~8m above ground). So after one month I can fully recommend this approach.
!! Use a good pwr supply, i.e. a 2.5A USB charger since the DVB-T stick can be very hungry too !!
When summer comes I will need cooling but those custom fit aluminium shells are also quite cheap to get.

The install is very simple:
1) Put the OS on an SD card (>8GB suffices as long as it is not too slow 10...30Mbps or so); use 'balenaEtcher' freeware to write the Armbian Bullseye OS to the card; insert in OPi and boot with ethernet network cable connected to your router; find OPi's LAN address in your router and use PuTTY Freeware from PC to log into your OPI for the first time (give it some minutes to boot) as "root" user with "1234" as pwd. You will be asked a few questions to finish the set-up.

2) reboot (commands you have to enter printed BOLD here), log in as root again and apply the following commands:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
reboot

Now you can set the WLAN parameters via command: nmtui

When this is finished you can reboot again and you should see your OPi connected to your router's WLAN (be aware though that it is only 2.4-GHz band capable). Try to PuTTY into the WLAN address. If this works you can detach the LAN cable and are free to restart (! always use HALT command before pwr off !) your OPi anywhere in reach of your WLAN.
This concludes the OS install.

3) DVB-T USB dongle install:
This is a bit tricky since you have to blacklist your DVB-T USB first to avoid UNIX applies the standard driver. The following commands create a blacklist file. If your DVB-T stick is recognized under a different name than one of those listed below (e.g. "dvb_usb_rtl28....") you may need to find out first and add this name in a new line. Let's assume we don't need this here, so you enter:
cat <<EOF > ~/no-rtl.conf
blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu
blacklist dvb_usb_rtl2832u
blacklist rtl2832
blacklist rtl2830
EOF
sudo mv ~/no-rtl.conf /etc/modprobe.d/

Now that the blacklist is in place you can install the usb library with:

sudo apt-get install -y cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev build-essential

Wait until all finishes and connect your DVB-T stick + antenna (the short one coming with most sticks was in my case surprisingly good for up to 100nm range !).

4) Final step: FR24 INSTALL Script - fully automated. Just enter:
sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://repo-feed.flightradar24.com/install_fr24_rpi.sh)"

You will be askes several questions. This is described in the forum already. That's it - basically... :-)

Have fun!

[numloxx]

Just reading this post for the first time.
I don't know what you are complaining about? They give you a FREE business account for hosting. That saves you $500 per year.

[renekm]

Just reading this post for the first time.
I don't know what you are complaining about? They give you a FREE business account for hosting. That saves you $500 per year.

It seems that you did not read my posts with understanding or you are naive enough to believe in marketing slogans. Well, imagine that this $500 package you mentioned can be obtained by a person who will create a receiver that will not even have an external antenna and will see maybe 20-30 planes a day. It just needs to be powered on and connected to the internet. Now compare such a receiver to a professional installation that tracks an average of 1500-1800 planes a day - because these are the results achieved by both my receivers. Which receiver contributes more to the entire Flightradar system? Consider. I have been sending data to Flightradar24 for several years and I do it at my own expense. I came to a point where my best receiver had a serious breakdown and due to financial issues it was hard for me to get funds to repair it. I wrote to Flightradar24 support and described the situation. I suggested that they send me their receiver, which they send to many people every month. But they just ignored me. Do you know why? Because they have a large number of small receivers and they think they have coverage in a certain area with many small receivers. But they do not take into account that such unprofessional devices often do not work because they have power shortages, internet shortages or the antenna is somewhere on the windowsill. They will find out when I disable sending to them from my two main receivers and holes appear in the range. Then they will start looking for potential locations for the receiver. Meanwhile, they had a person with a great location for the receiver, which they ignored. Now you understand ? Finally, I will add that a few days ago I launched my third receiver and it no longer sends data to Flightradar. The other two will stop sending data from February 1, 2023 when I change the firmware in the receivers to Piaware version above 8. And to keep this "free" subscription worth $ 500 per year, I will leave some receiver with an antenna in the form of a piece of wire. It will receive about 30 flights a day, but it will be online all the time and will send data, which is necessary to keep the subscription. Am I wrong? In Poland there is a proverb: "As Jacob treats God, so God treats Jacob".

Finally, for you or others who will criticize. My best receiver (the one that crashed and is mentioned in the topic) has just returned to the top of the statistics. Currently, it occupies the 41st place in the ranking worldwide and the first place in Poland ranking. My second receiver takes second place. And ask yourself, is this how FR24 should treat a user who contributes so much to the entire system?

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