RPI3b+ & RTL-SDRv4 Not functioning

[mcburks]

I am fairly new to all of this, so I apologize if I've missed something obvious.

I have a Raspberry Pi 3b+ with a new RTL-SDR V4 receiver attached to an antenna that is up about 15 ft in the air outside my house. I *thought* I had this all setup correctly, but I'm not receiving any data from any planes that I've seen on FR24 fly directly over my house. I installed RTL-SDR on my Windows computer and got it to work with the AirSpy software. I was able to hear several radio feeds from across the spectrum, so I'm pretty sure my antenna setup is functional.

When I hit IP:8754 for the status I see:

FR24 Link:	Connected via UDP
FR24 Radar Code:	#-#####
Local IP(s):	192.168.30.11, fe80::9521:2ca6:aac8:9ae7
Aircraft Tracked: (ModeS, ADS-B, UAT)	0
Aircraft Uploaded:	0
Receiver:	dvbt, Connected
MLAT running:	NO

However, if I run fr24feed-status from an SSH console I see:

pi@pi24-bookworm:~ $ fr24feed-status
FR24 Feeder/Decoder Process: running.
FR24 Stats Timestamp: 2024-01-27 19:17:57.
FR24 Link: connected [UDP].
FR24 Radar: #-#####.
FR24 Tracked AC: 0.
Receiver: down ... failed!
FR24 MLAT: not running ... failed!

I did update the drivers for FlightRadar24 as explained here RTL-SDR Blog V4 Users Guide

[abcd567]

The issue is caused by not installing the correct custom driver required for V4 dongle

There are multiple choices/method on the RTL SDR Blog V4 Guide. This results in many people using wrong method/option.

The method which matches with Raspberry Pi OS (Which is reliant on Debian packages) and makes V4 to work OK is as follows:

Alternative Debian Package Installation Method
If you have a system reliant on the Debian packages (eg. FlightRadar24, FlightAware, ADSBExchange, OpenWebRX+ images) you can update them directly using this method:

sudo apt update  

sudo apt install -y libusb-1.0-0-dev git cmake debhelper

git clone https://github.com/rtlsdrblog/rtl-sdr-blog  

cd rtl-sdr-blog  

sudo dpkg-buildpackage -b --no-sign

cd ../

sudo dpkg -i librtlsdr0_*.deb

sudo dpkg -i librtlsdr-dev_*.deb

sudo dpkg -i rtl-sdr_*.deb  
​

After completing above, REBOOT your RPi.


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