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

[andyk1]

Hi Jayant,

I've found a 5v 2a power supply.

I went back to the cmake and added the extra bit you suggested then followed the instructions again. I'm still not getting any data but the dongle light dims then brightens again when I do ./dump1090 --interactive.
I'm now getting:-

Found 1 device
Found Rafael Micro Micro R820T tuner
Max available gain is 49.60
Setting gain to 49.60
Exact sample rate is 2000000.052982 Hz
Gain reported by device is 49.60
I then get the Hex, Mode, Sqwk headings but no data

The antenna I'm using is one that works fine on a PC. I'm running the session via PuTTY on a PC.

Had the same problem in the beginning. Had to lower my --gain 33.8 I believe before I started getting good data. Auto gain does not work for me and as you... my led light flickers with incoming signal. Took me a while to figure that one out... why my led light flickered. Sorry if my --gain 33.8 setting is incorrect. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong. --gain 33.8 may also not be your optimal. Have to play with which gain setting is best for you.

[Andres]

Setting the gain (./dump1090 --gain 34 .... .... ....) to around 34dB greatly improved the reception here.

[peterhr]

I've been fiddling with the logs a bit. I've started logging to /var/log/fr24/ now instead of the /tmp directory, because I was never able to see exactly when fr24feed stopped transmitting stuff in case of a crash, so troubleshooting and correlating with the system logs was difficult. So I've added date/time stamps to the fr24feed log, and started logging to the /var/log/fr24/ directory to make the log stay across reboots and crashes. To avoid the logs filling up the SD card, setup logrotate to automatically rotate the logs every day and kill off old logs. I'll post the whole process up one of these days, for those who are interested in maintaining persistent logs.

Possible caveat: I'm investigating the possibility of the SD card dying with too many write operations, especially if it crashes or reboots without a proper shutdown. It's been running fine for a couple of weeks so far, but bear with me for a couple of days more. If I kill my SD card, we'll know this isn't a good idea! :-)

Best
Jayant

Maybe you could log to a USB pen drive?

I've just turned ADSBscope on again to see what the effect of --gain 34 was, the panes were jumping around like crazy and adsbscope plotted nothing.

Shut ADSBscope down and the jumping problem vanished - very odd.

Just looking at the dump1090 web page ... --gain 34 brought in more local traffic, but I lost some distance (I do have a pre-amp in the down-lead)

[trigger]

Some success. I've borrowed a powered hub. The pi is wired to the hub so no wireless to confuse matters.

On the pi web page (192.168.1.75) I get the occasional plane. My antenna when connected to my PC will typically pick up 30 to 40 planes.

The dump1090 screen is showing the header (Hex, Mode, Sqwk,Flight etc) for each line of data. Also I got about 30 lines of just the header when I first ran dump1090.

Any suggestions? If not, I've got a 2Gb SD card which I can sacrifice so I'm tempted to start from scratch.
Many thanks for your help so far.

As I mentioned in a later post to the above, I re built the 2Gb card from scratch and had some success. However, I have the problem of lines of header scrolling up the dump1090 screen. There is occasional data mixed in. I've attached a print screen.dump1090.png Is this normal?
Thanks
Dave

[Andres]

Just my guess; I believe you can have a better display using dump1090 with the " --interactive " option, as this mode sort of refreshes the screen after a "form feed", so the compound effect is more like a dynamically updated table. Please disregard this suggestion if you are already running dump1090 with the interactive option set.

[peterhr]

Sorry cant read it - if you select text in putty it gets copied to windows copy/paste buffrt, left click pastes content of copy/paste into putty at the cursor position.

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk

[Dundee]

It seems FR24 has released a new version of Linux software v241...
So we better update it directly or waiting for a new release of disk image by peterhr...

[peterhr]

Don't wait for a new image - this is a trivial change you can do yourselves

I'm giving it a trial - it's easy to switch back to the old feeder if required - the old and the new have different names so they can sit side by side on disk...

download the new feeder
unpack the compressed archive
check the file name
edit the fr24.sh script

pi@raspberrypi:~$ wget https://dl.dropbox.com/u/66906/fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz
--2014-02-22 08:26:06--  https://dl.dropbox.com/u/66906/fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz
Resolving dl.dropbox.com (dl.dropbox.com)... 54.243.33.239
Connecting to dl.dropbox.com (dl.dropbox.com)|54.243.33.239|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 FOUND
Location: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66906/fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz [following]
--2014-02-22 08:26:12--  https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66906/fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz
Resolving dl.dropboxusercontent.com (dl.dropboxusercontent.com)... 54.243.130.97
Connecting to dl.dropboxusercontent.com (dl.dropboxusercontent.com)|54.243.130.97|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 655010 (640K) [application/x-gtar]
Saving to: `fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz'

100%[==================================================================>] 655,010      684K/s   in 0.9s

2014-02-22 08:26:21 (684 KB/s) - `fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz' saved [655010/655010]

pi@raspberrypi:~$ tar -xzf fr24feed_arm-le_241s.tgz
pi@raspberrypi:~$ ls fr24feed_arm-le_241s
fr24feed_arm-le_241s

pi@raspberrypi:~$ nano fr24.sh

Edit the file

Locate

killall fr24feed_arm-le_233s

replace with

killall fr24feed_arm-le_241s

locate

export FR24AUTHIP=83.140.247.20
./fr24feed_arm-le_2233s --fr24key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx > /tmp/fr24feed.log &

replace with

#export FR24AUTHIP=83.140.247.20
./fr24feed_arm-le_241s --fr24key=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx > /tmp/fr24feed.log &

save the file, exit the edit
then start it up

pi@raspberrypi:~$ ./fr24.sh

pi@raspberrypi:~$ cat /tmp/fr24feed.log
[i]FR24Feed v241 - built on Feb 20 2014/09:54:09
[i]Downloading configuration...OK
[i]Parsing configuration...OK
[c]Interval: 5s
[c]Latitude: 52.xxxxx     (this and next line edited)
[c]Longitude: -2.xxxxx 
[c]GND: YES
[c]NonADSB: YES
[i]Source defined as Basestation
[b]connecting to 192.168.0.132:30003
[e]could not connect to BS
[i]waiting 5 seconds
[n]defined 2 servers
[n]EGBB19@83.140.21.66:8099/UDP
[n]connecting
[i][stats]Stats thread started
[n]connected
[n]switching to UDP
[n]working
[i]Source defined as Basestation
[b]connecting to 192.168.0.132:30003
[b]connected
[b]working
[i]Data feed time difference OK abs(08:30:01.047 - 08:30:01.043)=0
[i]sent 11 planes in 1 packets
[i]sent 17 planes in 1 packets
[i]sent 20 planes in 1 packets
[i]sent 23 planes in 1 packets
[i]sent 24 planes in 1 packets
pi@raspberrypi:~$

[peterhr]

As I mentioned in a later post to the above, I re built the 2Gb card from scratch and had some success. However, I have the problem of lines of header scrolling up the dump1090 screen. There is occasional data mixed in. I've attached a print screen.[ATTACH=CONFIG]3363[/ATTACH] Is this normal?
Thanks
Dave

Looked at it on the PC - looks normal except it's more like I'd expect from the little antenna that comes with the dongle, and with the antenna indoors.

I would expect a far longer list from an external antenna - this is what I get on my homebrew coco (I had to change the font size in putty to capture this without it scrolling off screen)

pi@raspberrypi:~/dump1090$ ./dump1090 --interactive --interactive-rows 60 

Hex     Mode  Sqwk  Flight   Alt    Spd  Hdg    Lat      Long   Sig  Msgs   Ti\
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
44f42e  S     4404  BAF654   26000                               14    57    0
a9fdeb  S     3462           35950  536  102   52.240   -6.501   12   115    0
47834a  S                    33975                               13    32    5
484165  S           KLM1073   7975  243  286                     20    49   49
484063  S                                                        10    10   55
406109  S     5475  CFE9750  38175                               13    93    0
706018  S     4746  KAC118   35000             53.475   -3.964   11   125    0
89619a  S     4745  UAE212   33000  546  093   53.436   -4.116   22   219    0
ae0811  S                    32000                               11    28   50
406446  S     5463  EZY94UN  30950  431  129                     13    93    0
4ca15d  S     5465  EIN20T   19825  294  291   53.343   -3.015   35   638    0
a5ef0e  S     5460           32825  502  104   51.615   -3.788   22   749    0
4ca4f6  S     4220  RYR409G  29000  414  094                     15   189    0
ab0e54  S     3426  DAL470   37000  525  084   51.610   -3.426   19   533    0
4006ae  S     4464  BAW172   35000  558  105   52.100   -5.960   15   275    0
400bb2  S     5467  CFE3292  28000                               69  1009    0
405c03  S     4235  BEE3FA   14325                              138  1377    0
40688f  S     4433  BAW188   15250  358  103   51.416   -1.873   13   339    1
3c4dd2  S     2052  DLH8XV    8875                              102   739    0
4ca117  S     0312  EIN422   37025  505  130   52.237   -1.632  107  1604    0
a500c5  S     5462           20000                               11   308    0
405c04  S     6323  BEE8AU   16925                              153  1256    0
400a0d  S     5457  VIR2C    28800  482  102   51.561   -2.915   23  1220    0
406131  S     7743  EZY50KL  29075  330  328   52.339   -0.584   45   929    0
405fb5  S     1223  AUR670B   5425                               15   274    2
4ca5c8  S     0326  EIN43K   34375  479  100   53.200   -3.430   32  1059    0
ae20c9  S     3402  RCH442   33000                               63  1242    0
4006ee  S     2220  EXS251U  20800  394  215   53.504   -2.388   30   216    0
4008b1  S     4242  SHT20D   18000  353  337   52.854   -1.481  129  1489    0
4ca213  S     5446  EIN154   33000  512  126   53.124   -2.519   68  1372    0
400a34  S     6315  EXS233   31775  473  152   52.914   -1.921  133  2045    0
4400f8  S     0523  AUA2587  24575  334  287   53.425   -0.214   14   196    0
4cab05  S     5445  EIN03L   33000  454  147   52.895   -2.341  127  2192    0
4ca63a  S     2076  EIN33C   36975  478  097   53.233   -1.915  165  2282    0
4ca2bd  S     5466           34000                               22  1618    0
400875  S     6303  TCX53DL  34375  512  152   51.615   -1.084   14  1040    0
405638  S     6313  EZY6815  35000  485  159   52.193   -1.628  124  2017    0
400ccf  S     5456  EZY37NP  31325  361  329   52.491   -1.065  137  1737    0
400a5b  S     5452  SHT88J   24925  508  136   52.523   -1.934  126  2290    0
406811  S     7725  BEE2ZK   15000                               12   521    6
3c4aa5  S     3444  CFG185   37000  478  082   50.917   -1.050   10   834    0
400a25  S     4231  SHT6G    31925  380  337   52.710   -1.273  133  2007    0
4068cb  S     2204           33000  484  153                     10   184   52
a8c88f  S     5461  UAL985   28175  455  108   51.678   -3.616   23   734    0
485000  S     3445  KLM702   36000  495  072   51.409   -1.452   34  1438    0
4ca294  S     0567  EIN40G   36950  498  121   51.868   -0.432   13  1287    0
4ca4ef  S     0556  RYR574L  38975  499  102   53.025    0.645   15   282    1
a05614  S     6251  DAL32    36025                               23   984    0
4ca0fe  S     7714  EIN550   32950  488  114   51.532   -1.918   30  1146    0
40095d  S     4216  SHT17T   16225  395  146   51.934   -1.531   27   744    2
ab20e7  S     3413  DAL248   39000  496  104   51.594   -2.182   29  1177    0
405ee0  S     4245  SHT12J   28025  363  336   53.398   -1.323   14  1096    0
4ca217  S     5424  EIN151   33975  317  297   52.248   -3.422   15  1066    3
484d10  S     3404  TFL364   37000  484  077   51.767   -0.308   12  1096    4

[loplo]

peterhr, you're right there's no need for a new image just to change an executable.
Is there any changelog for the 241s?

[HermanZA]

I am running the new feeder for some time already - no problems at all. So go for it! :-)

[peterhr]

peterhr, you're right there's no need for a new image just to change an executable.
Is there any changelog for the 241s?

I will update the image soon for new users.

Busy right row refreshing the home office ... Have been to Ikea and am now installing new Billy's.

[trigger]

I've just purchased a D-Link DWA-125 wireless dongle for my pi but can't get it to work. I've done a load of Googling but not found a solution. Have any of you guys got any experience of this dongle? lsusb sees it. Anything else I need to be looking for?

I have an old Belkin dongle which I plugged in and it just worked.
Thanks

[Jayant]

I've just purchased a D-Link DWA-125 wireless dongle for my pi but can't get it to work. I've done a load of Googling but not found a solution. Have any of you guys got any experience of this dongle? lsusb sees it. Anything else I need to be looking for?

I have an old Belkin dongle which I plugged in and it just worked.
Thanks

What's the specific problem? Not getting an IP address? If lsusb can see it then the hardware seems to be ok. Check the syslog after booting up to see if the drivers are loading up Ok.

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

[trigger]

Hi Jayant,
I'm a complete noob when it comes to Linux and RPi so you will have to explain everything in words of 1 syllable. I found out about lsusb from one of the searches I did.

I'll find out what's in syslog and come back.
Thanks
Dave