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Raspberry Pi type B + DVB-T Dongle to feed FR24

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  • #91
    1090@mumbia_roof1.jpg

    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for the update. I've been playing around with the Pi for a few days, and have noticed the heating problems. Based on my observations, I'm pretty sure it's not going to stay alive for long in an exposed area, specially in India where temperatures can get pretty severe. I have a limitation in the sheer distance to an antenna on my roof since I'm on a very low floor of a condo, and the roof is 14 floors up from me. So running a coax all the way down is going to be tricky. I'll try to locate the Pi indoors, but somewhere very close to the antenna, probably inside the stairwell. That way all I (hopefully) need to worry about is getting network connectivity. At worst, I'll run a cat-6 cable all the way down to my router.

    My bigger concern is getting a decent antenna shipped in here, hence my query to raikut. I wanted to know if the FR24 gear he got needed some special paperwork to get it past customs in India. Getting any kind of radio gear locally is nearly impossible here, so we have to figure out ways to get stuff in by mail order pretty much.

    From my rooftop, even with the little DVB-T UHF magfoot antenna, I can get decent reception, so hopefully with a better antenna things will improve.

    If any of the FR24 guys who have shipped stuff into India read this, please do let me know - any info will be helpful!
    T-VABB7 | RTL dongle + Raspberry Pi + dump1090 + Bulgarian 5dBi collinear

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    • #92
      You could try to make your own antenna from easy to find parts - Just google ADSB antenna or 1090 antenna - the designs are usually simple, just need care with the construction.

      I'm running my pi + dongle on power over Ethernet using these parts from Ebay (most of the parts actually come from China)

      POE (Power over Ethernet) on the cheap and is working!

      http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/321166829169 voltage regulator - it has a micro USB to connect to the power socket on the PI - this will regulate 8v to about 20v down to 5v needed for the Pi. (unlss you can find power for the Pi nearby)
      http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/160756789659 female adaptor feeds it from
      http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200841109556 with 10m of ethernet cable between the two parts (on the RJ45 plugs on the adaptors go into the PI and into a homeplug)
      this is then fed from a 12v power supply

      Maybe you can find a riser cupboard to put the Pi in - one that provides an easy cable path down to your condo and maybe even cable trays to cable tie the CAT 6 to (are you allowed to open them to install stuff?)
      Last edited by peterhr; 2013-09-22, 17:06.

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      • #93
        Hi Jayant.

        As PeterHR said, I had a heat problem with my Pi - It was in a steel cabinet on the roof and was exposed to the morning sun. In the box I have other PowerSupplies for Ubiquity Wireless equipment and a network switch, those devices never had problems but the Pi had. I changed my setup: the Pi is indoors in the living room, running a powered USB extender cable to the roof where the dongle is under the roof overhang and always in shade. FYI: The CHIPS used on the Pi are rated 0 - 70degrees C, but no indication what the boards tolerances are, and I suspect that is where us two are facing our problems.

        I believe Mumbai and the whole of India, gets pretty hot in the summer, so what I can suggest are a few things I got off the internet. Put it in a plastic IP65 type waterproof enclosure (those thick plastic boxes used for wifi and other stuff) and then put it into a metal electrical box. Yes, double box it. The metal box however, you modify for ventilation. At the top and bottom, cut holes in and fit 90 degree plastic water pipe elbows (diameter say 70mm or so) On the inside you can put computer extractor fans (or better) to suck cooler air from the bottom and push the hotter air at the top out of the 90 degree bend. If you get heavy rain storms, you can even think about modifying the 90 degree bends with 2 of then, so you actually have a U shape. This will prevent water from being sucked in, or running into the box from above. Hope my explaining the idea, makes sense.

        I Google'd a bit to try and find you the right idea to work from: Not endorsing or suggesting, just giving you an idea of the product http://www.mierproducts.com/outdoor_...nclosures.html or like this: http://www.l-com.com/nema-enclosures...roof-enclosure Your country is pretty good with manufacturing, so I'm quite sure you will find a shop that can build such a box for you at a good price.

        What you can also try and do: add large heatsinks (heat fins) to the outside of the Pi enclosure and mount fans on that (think in terms of a computer CPU's cooling concept). Won't look pretty, but the airflow will get the heat away from the Pi itself. Then stick it into some kind of watertight enclosure. The larger it is, the better. Also worth a shot, what about thick aluminum oven foil? Its good for heat isolation and will keep some unwanted EM noise away from the device, if connected to ground.

        Keep us posted in how the project goes. Perhaps some of the other members can also give ideas and suggestions.
        Last edited by HermanZA; 2013-09-22, 21:18.

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        • #94
          This thread goes into lots of detail about cooling Pi's http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/vi...hp?f=41&t=8540
          AMS Daily Fight Information: http://schiphol.dutchplanespotters.nl/

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          • #95
            The PoE is a great idea, I was trying to find the bits to put something together to make it work. Right now I'm powering the whole rig off a Belkin USB hub, which is doing a nice job of providing power and also driving the DVB-T dongle. If I can get the parts to power it over the network cable, it saves me the trouble of running a power cable some distance.

            I've already found a couple of likely locations right next to the riser to setup the Pi, so hopefully one of them will work out. Got to get the aparment admin guys to agree to let me fiddle round in the risers :-)

            I did in fact try to put togther a homebrew wire collinear, but in the absence of even halfway decent measuring gear to test it, I got pretty bad performance off it. I'm trying to build the spider now, but you will not believe how difficult it is to even find 12 or 14 gauge copper wire around here. We use starnded copper for electricals, so finding any solid copper is quite difficult. N-connectors and SMAs are another story! Anyway, I will get around to it, mostly get time only on weekends. I've also got my eye set on a coax collinear, but that does lok a lot more fiddly, and there are sure to be issues with 75/50 ohm mismatches there. 75 ohms stuff is relatively easier to find here, because the CATV networks all use that.

            Anyway, half the fun is in building it, so I'm having fun at least! :-)
            T-VABB7 | RTL dongle + Raspberry Pi + dump1090 + Bulgarian 5dBi collinear

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            • #96
              Wow, HermanZA - you've really been doing some research into the cooling bit! Thanks for the suggestions, I'm going to have a go with cooling fans in case it does get hot even in the stairwell which is not exposed to open sunlight. Also taking a look at the thread suggested by speedbird1960.

              BTW, the location I have found is not directly exposed to rain, so I may not need to take such elaborate measures with IP65 waterproofing. I can get to a pretty safe indoor location from the antenna with a relatively short run of coax, so hopefully I'll only have the antenna exposed outdoors.
              T-VABB7 | RTL dongle + Raspberry Pi + dump1090 + Bulgarian 5dBi collinear

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              • #97
                I was wondering about putting the Pi into a box with substantial heatsinks inside and outside, bolted together through the case using copper / aluminium bolts as heat pipes. sealing the heat sinks to the box with silicon caulk to prevent water ingress. I'm a great believer in not using fans unless I really need to, then if I do use a big slow one rather than a fast little whizzy one since the bearings on a fan will always fail eventually. There are lots of heatsinks on Ebay (in fact the one inside the case could be a thick aluminium sheet bent to create a lining to the box)

                On the collinear antenna - I left the top of mine open ended (no resistor) - in retrospect, I should have just left the last centre conductor stuck up out the end as a 1/4 wave whip antenna (68mm spike).

                If trying the POE, the CAT6 cable will give a volt drop over it's length that will depend on the current drawn though it (a good reason to avoid a fan) and the length - about 50 meters for you - I would definitely test the setup on the bench before installing to ensure the right voltage PSU is chosen ... the regulator is good for an input of up to 20v - so up to an 18v PSU would be good. The regulator is very efficient - seems to be an active device not just something that turns the extra power to heat - I'm well pleased with it.
                Last edited by speedbird1960; 2013-09-23, 17:19. Reason: Reference to moving post to this thread as it has now been done

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                • #98
                  This one is for you, Peter. I noticed that newer versions of Debian / Wheezy don't like init scripts which don't specify the boot sequence dependencies. Because of this, apt-get pops up a warning about missing LSB tags, something like this:

                  warning: script 'fr24' missing LSB tags and overrides

                  I added a standard (slightly tweaked) LSB header to your script and the warnings seem to have gone away. Here's what I added:

                  ### BEGIN INIT INFO
                  # Provides: fr24
                  # Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog $time
                  # Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog $time
                  # Should-Start: $network
                  # Should-Stop: $network
                  # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
                  # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
                  # Short-Description: Start 1090dump and fr24 at boot time
                  # Description: Start the RTL-SDR decoder and FlightRadar24 feeder at boot
                  ### END INIT INFO

                  I've put network dependency as optional since the scripts can in theory be started up without the network being up. It may be useful for you to try this out and add it into that excellent tutorial you've put up.

                  The Pi project is still a work in progress for me, with getting a proper antenna and rigging it up being the top priority. Also working on:

                  1) PoE to run power over the network cable (thanks for the links to PoE gear you posted!)
                  2) Keeping the Pi cool, and
                  3) Trying to get 3G connectivity going, but that's on the back burner so far.

                  Waiting for mail-order parts can be very frustrating! :-)
                  T-VABB7 | RTL dongle + Raspberry Pi + dump1090 + Bulgarian 5dBi collinear

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                  • #99
                    Speaking of the collinear: Its a good DIY project and solution. Also ended up without a resistor at the top (added about 70km from what the magmount did) but am thinking about redoing the whole thing, add the resistor and see what range I can get then. Always looking to improve!

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                    • What cable did you use for your collinear? Was it RG-6 (75 ohms) or some other 50 ohms cable? The instructions at balarad.net use an inductive coupling with a 75 ohms antenna and feeder line and two more collinears of different impedances acting as a balancing transformer. Sounds way too involved to me, but then my RF experience is very limited. Would I have serious VSWR problems if I used RG-6U (75 ohms) for the collinear and terminated it directly into a 50 ohms N-type connector?
                      T-VABB7 | RTL dongle + Raspberry Pi + dump1090 + Bulgarian 5dBi collinear

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                      • I used RG6 cable through out. Antenna is 8 elements. Its rather easy to build, give it a shot!

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                        • Originally posted by Jayant View Post
                          What cable did you use for your collinear? Was it RG-6 (75 ohms) or some other 50 ohms cable? The instructions at balarad.net use an inductive coupling with a 75 ohms antenna and feeder line and two more collinears of different impedances acting as a balancing transformer. Sounds way too involved to me, but then my RF experience is very limited. Would I have serious VSWR problems if I used RG-6U (75 ohms) for the collinear and terminated it directly into a 50 ohms N-type connector?
                          Oh Umm, I used some low loss coaxial TV antenna cable with an air spaced dielectric I found in my garden shed, I guess that's 'some other 75 Ohm Cable'. To test it, I taped it to a bamboo cane and later put it in some 22mm white PVC tube (plumbing overflow pipe). Easy to make, I put 10 elements on it.

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                          • Great! Thanks for all the inputs, guys! I'm sold on the RG-6 collinear.

                            Just one more question, what connectors? I have a choice of N Type or maybe SMAs, or even BNCs! Did you put a connector on the antenna, or just connect a long length of coax to the last element of the antenna? Any particular connector preferences?
                            T-VABB7 | RTL dongle + Raspberry Pi + dump1090 + Bulgarian 5dBi collinear

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                            • I used an ordinary TV-Coax plug since I had the adapter for that to the tuner stick ... if it's wrong it's just a matter of changing the bottom element as long as it's accessible.

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                              • Hey!!!
                                Got my RPi on Friday evening and set it up Saturday but was a pain since copying and pasting didn't work since not sure where you are... UK I'm guessing and changed my keyboard layout to US. Anyway got it figured out and set up per your Pdf file. Great work by the way. As I said have it set up and running but I have a strange problem. I see planes using the small dongle antenna supplied but doesn't see a single plane on my mast mouted antenna which sees up to a 120 planes at times. Switching antennas back and forth I see no planes on the antenna (mast mounted at 15 meters) and great reception on windows Virtual Radar, adsdscope or everything. Not on the PI though. I can't figure why. Have looked and looked for info but can't seem to find anyone with the same problem. I am guessing I need to turn my default db down in rtl but can't find how to change that setting.

                                I have an other problem. While running dump1090 on my PC i.e. "http:192.168.1.9:8080" I get the dump screen but it doesn't update at all. Even doing a refresh it stays with the same data. I have to close out windows explorer and reload it to get new data but no refresh. I'm stumped.

                                One more problem. Doesn't work on a wifi dongle either. I does work when I log in and go to the main screen as I've set it up and connects to my main wifi network but not when I restart to run as a stand alone as per your directions.
                                Yes I set up the dhcp server and address reservation, mac address and all to 192.168.1.11 which is the wifi address but doesn't connect on reboot. I know wifi is a pain on the Pi because I've been reading that a lot. Anyway I got it to work plug into the lan and it works. other than the before mentioned problems. Anyone have the same problem and or salutation for these? Really need to figure out how to set my db lower than the default which was 49.something db on set up which was the default in rtl mostly I'm guessing.

                                Well thanks in advance for all your help and cheers

                                Andy T-KTIK1
                                Andy T-KTIK1

                                RPI - http://Temporarily off Line due to t...98.37.214:8080

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