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  • Very Dim Newbie v What Am I Seeing

    Hi all,

    I am extremely new to all this FR24 stuff (actually < 24hrs) and I am pretty clueless as far as Raspberry Pi and related things are concerned. I don't even know what a 'sudo' is, so you have to assume pond life if you are kind enough to answer my question.

    I bought a Raspberry Pi 3B+. I loaded NOOBS and then the Raspbian software and actually got the whole thing to work, with it being plugged into my TV via HDMI. I had seen SSH mentioned before I did any of this and, after Googling what SSH was, I enabled it on my Pi. Good so far...ish

    Next I followed the instructions on the FR24 website for downloading Pi24 and 'flashing' it to the SD card using Etcher. When I put the card back into the Pi and re-booted the FR24 screen came up but it didn't see my ADSB dongle. I have the Flight Aware Pro plugged into the Raspberry Pi. Somehow (a LOT more luck than judgement) I managed to SSH into my Raspberry Pi and typed the code as instructed on the FR24 page. That worked and I filled in all the necessary data and, long story short, actually managed to get all up and running.

    I've been awarded a business account and if I go into the data it shows that I've seen some aircraft and their ranges. The weather here is pretty horrible at the moment (south of Perth in Western Australia) so I'm not going to see and light aircraft etc for the next few days but I believe my set up has seen some of the traffic for Perth and yesterday evening I am told it saw an aircraft at 168nm

    The reason I say all of this because I think all my stuff is working okay. The Pi, dongle etc are now in a cupboard upstairs in my house and not connected to a TV but the Pi is plugged into an ethernet port.

    So, the two questions I have that you gurus may be able to answer (please remember that I do not know my arse from my elbow when talking about Raspberry Pis etc and need extremely simple instructions......imagine I am 3 years old, please):

    1. Is there a way of seeing if I am actually sending data to FR24? I know I've seen some aircraft but I just don't know if the positions have been fed to FR24.

    2. What I would really like to do is install an app on either my MacBook Pro or our home iMac and see the aircraft I'm actually seeing displayed on a sort of radar display. I think this is the sort of thing you see on Dump1090 but, as I have explained, I am absolutely clueless on how I might go about installing that. Hopefully it'll be possible without me having to take the Pi out of its location etc and it's working and I don't want to muck that up if I can help it.

    I do know what the IP address of the Raspberry Pi is and I can get the FR24 screen using the IP address:8754 instruction. I know; I'm over-qualified, right

    Thank you for any help and advice you may be able to give me and for taking the time to put in idiot language for me.

    Cheers,

    Paul

  • #2
    If you can get to that page. Then you can already tell if its feeding

    FR24 Link: Connected via TCP
    FR24 Radar Code:
    Local IP(s):
    Aircraft Tracked:
    (ModeS & ADS-B) 19
    Aircraft Uploaded: 17
    Receiver: beast-tcp, Connected
    MLAT running: YES

    The local map is the same way. But the :8754 is swapped for /dump1090/gmap.html
    Posts not to be taken as official support representation - Just a helpful uploader who tinkers

    Comment


    • #3
      Fantastic, thank you so much Oblivian

      I told you I was dim but, just as you pointed out, the 8754 address tells me that I have uploaded some aircraft, so it's great to know that I'm transmitting as well as receiving.

      The map link works as well and I can see the paltry number of aircraft that I'm seeing (only 4 at the moment) but it is good that I can visualise the aircraft that are being received. I suppose my wish list would now have range rings etc centred around my location but I don't know if that is possible as the /dump instruction shows me a warning that says 'This page can't load Google Maps correctly' and asks me if I own the website. The map has 'For development purposes only' written on it. Not a big deal at all and I am grateful that I can see the aircraft I'm tracking, especially as it's a home-made collinear antenna......good old YouTube

      Thank you, again, for your help and simple instructions.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by PaulSS View Post
        I suppose my wish list would now have range rings etc centred around my location but I don't know if that is possible
        Yes, you can have the range rings centered at your location if you add latitude and longitude in "Process arguments" field of settings page.
        Please see Settings Page's screenshot in this post:
        STEP-1: Download Necessary Software 1.1 - Download PI24 image (zip) on your Desktop/Laptop Download page: https://www.flightradar24.com/build-your-own Direct download link: https://repo-feed.flightradar24.com/...latest.img.zip (https://repo-feed.flightradar24.com/rpi_images/fr24-raspberry-pi-latest.img.zip) 1.2 - Download

        Comment


        • #5
          Thank you, abcd567 for your advice. I am pleased to say I have now got a 'blob' on the map where I live and some radar rings around me

          Do you happen to know how I can adjust the ranges of the rings? It's not a problem if they can't be modified but they are some way out and it would be nice to add some a bit closer.

          Also, when I was looking at the Dump1090 data I could see an aircraft at 181nm but when I look at the FR24 statistics for my site it shows the maximum distance for seeing an aircraft as 149nm. Does anyone know the reason for the difference?

          Finally, is there any way I can 'tidy' the map up a bit on the Dump1090 site? Ideally I'd like to have the 'normal' Google hybrid map, instead of just the map with "For development purposes only" written on it. Again, this is not at all important but I'd just like to do it if I can.

          I do appreciate all the very quick responses I've had and I am very pleased with the progress that has been made thanks to your help.
          Attached Files

          Comment


          • #6
            Get yourself a current dump1090 version with working map (Openstreet map, google maps don't work properly anymore for selfhosted pages)

            You could either get a more current dump1090-mutability version (https://forum.flightradar24.com/thre...dump1090-v1-15)

            Or you could get the successor, it has some flightaware branding though:

            (dump1090-fa is made by the same guy who developed dump1090-mutability, which is a little dated now)

            If i remember correctly you can get a bing maps api key to display bing satellite maps.

            You also might want to read something on whip antennas:


            You might also like some graphs: https://github.com/wiedehopf/graphs1090#graphs1090

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by PaulSS View Post
              Do you happen to know how I can adjust the ranges of the rings? It's not a problem if they can't be modified but they are some way out and it would be nice to add some a bit closer.
              (1) Open file config.js for editing
              Code:
              sudo nano /usr/share/dump1090-mutability/html/config.js
              (2) Press Ctrl+w and type SiteCircles then press Enter key. The cursor will jump to following lines

              Code:
              SiteCircles = true; // true to show circles (only shown if the center marker is shown)
              // In nautical miles or km (depending settings value 'Metric')
              SiteCirclesDistances = new Array(100,150,200);
              (3) In followin line change distances. By default these are 100, 150, and 200 nm

              SiteCirclesDistances = new Array(100,150,200);

              (4) Save file (Ctrl+o) then close file (Ctrl+x)

              (5) Reload browser (Ctrl+F5)




              Originally posted by PaulSS View Post
              Finally, is there any way I can 'tidy' the map up a bit on the Dump1090 site? Ideally I'd like to have the 'normal' Google hybrid map, instead of just the map with "For development purposes only" written on it. Again, this is not at all important but I'd just like to do it if I can.
              Map: How to Get Rid of the "For development purposes only" Water Mark

              .

              Comment


              • #8
                Thank you, Wiedehopf (I think)

                I've had a look the links you attached and had to have a lie down because I felt a bit ill. I don't even know where I would type all those commands......yes, I really am that stupid. Is a dump1090-mutability something that I have to download first? As I said, I really am clueless

                I've done a fair bit of Googling etc with the antennas recently and have built myself a collinear antenna and a spider. I am going to see if I can test which one works the best but 181nm isn't a bad start I think for 8 pieces of RG6 coax

                Comment


                • #9
                  I managed to SSH into my Raspberry Pi and typed the code as instructed on the FR24 page.
                  That's where you want the commands to go. (RPi console/shell, no matter if you connect via SSH or connect yourself a keyboard and HDMI screen)
                  The commands usually include the download (whether it's via the package system (apt / apt-get) or a direct download from the web (wget) ).

                  If you got SSH to work already you can't be that clueless :P

                  Oh i didn't read quite everything, just that you didn't receive too many aircraft.
                  Seems your reception is actually quite good.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    If it gives you some idea of your coverage, my system is reporting a total of 12 aircraft in the whole Perth area of which there are barely a half dozen Mode S aircraft flying at the moment.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by PaulSS View Post
                      I don't even know where I would type all those commands......
                      Why type? Why not copy-paste?

                      Typing is heavily prone to typing mistakes which result in failure of commands. Copy-pasting commands totally eliminates typos and is much easier and is faster as well.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        To all who have helped me today (and a very big shout out to abdd567 because I managed to follow his instructions easily) I thank you wholeheartedly

                        I now know where to look to find out what I'm feeding and how to get a map of what my kit is seeing and centre it on me.

                        Then I even managed to adjust the range rings!!

                        Then I went one further and got a decent map

                        I did try your links, wiedehopf, but then I got scared when I found out the FR24 instructions involved a beast, instead of my ADSB dongle and I chickened out lest I make something explode. I do appreciate your efforts but I'm still far too new at this to start making modifications that bear no resemblance to what I see on my computer screen.

                        Anyway, undeterred I did follow your link to abcd567's excellent advice on replacing dump1090 v1.14 with 1.15. Amazingly I even managed to follow the instructions and got it to work. What is this world coming to!!

                        I was literally just getting to the end of the whole process when I heard a crash outside. It's very dark here, raining and very windy. Unfortunately the crash was the pole on top of my roof which hold the weather station anemometer etc AND my lovely ADSB antenna SO, here I am with a lovely display, great range rings and sitting in the centre of my map......with no traffic. Not even Stealth's 12 aircraft from Perth

                        It's just a temporary snag and hopefully I'll get the antenna re-erected tomorrow (so long at the roof isn't slippery). THEN I'll be King Of Australind ADSB

                        Thanks again, everyone, for helping the newbie without a clue.

                        How good does this look (imagine traffic on it):
                        Attached Files

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          There is on one hand the ModeS Beast, which is a receiver.
                          On the other hand there is the beast protocol, which dump1090 adopted as its main protocol for shoving around messages.
                          dump1090 offers these messages per default on port 30005 which fr24 is configured to connect to.
                          With the default configuration fr24feed starts dump1090 internally instead of connecting to an independently running instance.

                          Hope this clears that up, no ModeS Beast required.

                          dump1090-mutability 1.15 is just fine as well, you might even like the optics better.

                          The graphs work fine with mutability 1.15 so if you would still like those, installing them is very easy, just one command
                          But foremost good luck reinstalling your mast!
                          Hopefully your roof didn't get damaged.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            On the other hand there is the beast protocol, which dump1090 adopted as its main protocol for shoving around messages.
                            dump1090 offers these messages per default on port 30005 which fr24 is configured to connect to.
                            With the default configuration fr24feed starts dump1090 internally instead of connecting to an independently running instance.
                            If it helps, I can order two beers and say that my friend will pay in about six languages. However, I've just watched the end of Game Of Thrones and think what you said above is akin to language in which the dragon girl speaks

                            I promise I will give the graphs a whirl tomorrow but now I must away to my slumbers and dream of sudos and other Japanese wrestling games.

                            Cheers

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by PaulSS View Post
                              I promise I will give the graphs a whirl tomorrow
                              Dont forget wiedehopf's graphs. I strongly recommend their installation.
                              These graphs are a very useful tool for optimizing & monitoring your station.

                              Installation is very simple.Give following command, and wait for few minutes for script to complete the installation.
                              Code:
                              sudo bash -c "$(wget -q -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiedehopf/graphs1090/master/install.sh)"
                              Wait for another 15 minutes for graphs to collect data, then visit following address in your browser to see the graphs.

                              IP-OF-PI/graphs1090/
                              Last edited by abcd567; 2019-06-09, 14:23.

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