Local Traffic on Custom Feed

Folks,

Been feeding FlightAware for over a year now and have started experimenting with VRS

Saw how to feed your site using VRS as a rebroadcast server, seemed easy enough and feed shows up as connected on my VRS options.

Now it says view my local traffic on CustomGlobal page. Now I assume my traffic is there but how do I know, if I shut down the rebroadcast server the aircraft still show anyway.

Am I looking at the wrong page or is it just happy in the knowledge it is there somewhere?

Geffers

 

If I look at VRS on my local machine the only aircraft I see are the ones my ADS-B tuner is picking up. If I rebroadcast to adsbexchange then go to custom feed I see a lot more planes than on my local machine via VRS. The instructions suggest I can view 'my' data as opposed to all data - or am I reading this wrong?

Geffers

 

I'll check tomorrow but think on reflection; as I am sending data to adsbexchange using a VRS rebroadcast facility I'm not going to get anything better from adsbexchange than on my local machine.

No problem sharing the data but I will gain nothing viewing the adsbexchange VRS site.

Geffers

 

I have mlat enabled on my Pi through PiAware software which is being fed into a VRS on my local network. So I can view my traffic on my VRS server anyway. Appreciate with the adsbexchange version I could switch to the merged feed but I can view that anyway.

My main point of interest is local traffic as I am around 12 miles from London, Heathrow so can see aircraft on approach and departing and VRS is a much better display than the PiAware web server.

Geffers

 

I'm going round in circles here, I have set up VRS as a rebroadcast server exactly as described on the web page; used port 41000 and all appears to work fine. My VRS status window shows it as connected and data being sent.

Now, How Claim A Feed

Go to the Custom Feeds Live Map using links in the main website menu. Other Tracking Info -> Custom Feeds.

Click Menu -> Receiver.

I do not have an option here to choose a receiver. I'm not sure how the main page can even associate with me as there is no login so I am baffled with this.

Geffers

 

Please don't feed using VRS. Timestamps are garbage and there are multiple issues with it.

Feed from the PI, it's simple and easy.

Also custom feeder server gets wrecked, so it will take a long time for the menu to show up during peak times. Hold off a claiming a custom feed. I need to buy more servers and host a few custom feed VM so everyone can look at the same data they can see on their own network.


Set your Pi to feed beast (direct from dump1090 port 30005) to : feed.adsbexchange.com port 30005

FlightAware image.

https://www.adsbexchange.com/forum/threads/new-piaware-3-5-3-image.618956/

Dont feed with VRS. It mangles the data.

 

Why are full instructions on the adsbexchange web site then? That is what prompted me to share data.

Geffers

 

Because we try to be flexible and some people don't have the skills to setup a Pi feeder or the hardware.

If you have a Pi just feed direct from dump1090, then you don't have to have VRS running and consuming CPU cycles.

VRS is not the best way to feed, but for some that is all they can do.

 

I'm pretty sure that most people who are enthusiastic with this hobby would quite accept not using VRS if they were aware it could cause problems. I will disable mine immediately.

You mention just feed directly from dump1090 - I have two R-pi devices using Flightaware image. I am pretty competent with Linux and command line but presently have little idea how to simply set the Pi to beast then use dump1090

I do not want to create problems with my currently working devices.

Geffers

 

Unfortunately, that is not the case for VRS users. Quite a few of the VRS feeds are sending basestation and not compressed VRS. So even following VRS feeding instructions is a challenge.

The default dump1090 port 30005 is raw beast/avr output, that's what everything uses including FA, and every feeder client. You need to sent Pi localhost port 30005 output to feed.adsbexchange.com port 30005.

Are you using the FA image with ADSBx already installed? This one just needs configured in piaware-config.txt.
https://www.adsbexchange.com/forum/threads/new-piaware-3-5-3-image.618956/

Or are you using the FlightAware image from FlightAware? This one needs the proper things installed.
https://github.com/jprochazka/adsb-exchange

Code:

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/adsbxchange/adsb-exchange.git
cd adsb-exchange
chmod +x setup.sh
sudo ./setup.sh

 

I actually thought the instructions were very good, so is it still a problem if set correctly with compressed Data?

Geffers

 

Correct. I will catch basestation feeds so you can mess it up and I wrote code to direct it to a basestation instance ..

 

I can see nowhere in the dump1090-fa arguments for feed.adsbexchange.com port 30005 to be entered.

Yes, I know there is a script but the only way to understand problems is to understand how things start up and work.

Geoff

 

dump1090 is a decoder. It tunes the SDR and decodes then outputs that decode on 30005 (avr/beat) and 30003 (basestation)

Feeder clients for ads-b sites connect to dump1090 output port and direct traffic to their home base.

Look at the scripts on the image. Here is a an excerpt from the bash script that uses socat to connect to dump1090 locally running and send it to adsbexchange. Scripts on image have more variables, but the idea is identical.

netcat_maint.sh

using socat

Code:

while true
  do
    /usr/bin/socat -u TCP:localhost:30005 TCP:feed.adsbexchange:30005
    sleep 30
  done

unreliable method using netcat pipe

Code:

nc localhost 30005 | nc feed.adsbexchange.com 30005

That image is not hard, there is nothing you need to do but configure that piaware-config.txt and plug it in.

 

Interesting, thank you, will give it or similar a try.

Geoff