New Flightradar24 feeding software for Raspberry Pie

[Mike]

We are happy to announce the release of MLAT based on Raspberry Pi receivers.

If you would like to participate, please make sure you have the following:

• Raspberry Pi B+ or Raspberry Pi 2
• DVB-T USB receiver with antenna
• Fairly good location to install the antenna

Tests were performed on RPi B+ and RPi2 with Raspbian OS, but it still may work on older models and/or other OS.

The recommended way to install the decoder software is through our APT repository in order to simplify future update process.

SSH into your Raspberry Pi and execute this command:

sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com/install_fr24_rpi.sh)"

You will be asked to enter your email address, antenna position and other details.

--- OR if you want to do it manually step by step, follow instructions below ---


First you will need to configure the repository, importing our keys and adding the repository URL:

$ gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 40C430F5
$ gpg --armor --export 40C430F5 | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com flightradar24 raspberrypi-stable

Allow non-root user to access DVB-T devices:

sudo apt-get install dirmngr
sudo wget -O  /etc/udev/rules.d/rtl-sdr.rules "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osmocom/rtl-sdr/master/rtl-sdr.rules"

Install dump1090 build of your choice, e.g. mutability version:

wget -O /tmp/dump1090-mutability_1.14_armhf.deb https://github.com/mutability/dump1090/releases/download/v1.14/dump1090-mutability_1.14_armhf.deb
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/dump1090-mutability_1.14_armhf.deb
rm -f /tmp/dump1090-mutability_1.14_armhf.deb

Then update the cache and just run regular install command (further updates may be performed issuing the same 2 commands):

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install fr24feed

The package provides everything required to run the decoder software, including Malcolm Robb's fork of dump1090 utility. You may replace it with other forks which support "--mlat" argument for MLAT feeding.

After installation, please run the sign-up wizard even if you already have a sharing key:

$ fr24feed --signup

You will be asked for a sharing key, whether or not you want MLAT enabled and for your exact position. Please carefully input the antenna's position, including altitude, because it's important for MLAT calculations. Other sign-up steps remain the same as before.

After sign-up process is complete, you may start feeding data by issuing:

$ sudo systemctl restart fr24feed

As usual you may monitor the app status by:

$ fr24feed-status
[ ok ] FR24 Feeder/Decoder Process: running.
[ ok ] FR24 Stats Timestamp: 2015-07-01 07:55:45.
[ ok ] FR24 Link: connected [UDP].
[ ok ] FR24 Radar: T-XXXX12.
[ ok ] FR24 Tracked AC: 2.
[ ok ] Receiver: connected (3313 MSGS/0 SYNC).
[ ok ] FR24 MLAT: ok [UDP].
[ ok ] FR24 MLAT AC seen: 5.

Common issues:

• Incorrect file permissions for /etc/fr24feed.ini - please verify that "pi" user has write permissions on that file
• Another instance of fr24feed and/or dump1090 is running and "sudo systemctl stop fr24feed" doesn't help - please check that by issuing "pgrep -l fr24feed; pgrep -l dump1090" and further "sudo kill -9 " giving the corresponding PID as an argument

Note: discussion on how to run fr24feed with other feeding software