First Experiments

[IainM]

Just starting to try and get the system working, great to see a project like this taking off and keen to give it a go.

I can confirm the automatic licensing system seems to be working fine; While I was registering on the forum to request a licence the new way of doing it popped up and the old thread locked, so my timing must have been perfect!

I'm using a very old Pi, not sure what model it is, theres a new one in the post, and the recommended wi-fi dongle.  Also an old DVB-T stick that works fine on flight radar 24.  Only trying to get ADSB-in at the moment and skipping the ARF board.

It looks as if my DVB-T stick is not compatible?  According to the homepage at 192.168.1.1 it lists it as a Realtek Semiconductor Corp RTL2838 DVB-T.  The ADSB Sentence count remains at zero, and if I watch the boot messages on a TV screen there are some error messages about reading and writing to rtlsdr write_reg failed with -1 or similar, and cb transfer status 5 cancelled.  On the other hand if I boot without the stick, it reports it is missing, so it is recognising it.

Is the consensus I need to try a different receiver?  Assume the newer Pi will not make any difference to this bit working?

The system looks to be talking to Runway HD and CollisionAware OK.

[ianfallon]

If you're getting errors then you probably need to get a different DVB dongle/antenna. See "Known Good Hardware" thread.

PilotAware is quite sensitive to getting the right compatible dongles (Wifi, ADS-B, GPS) at the moment and supporting a vast variety of hardware is not top priority right now.

It will all run fine on the original Model B Pi, but you can then only have the DVB and Wifi dongles due to the 2 USB ports.
The B+ basically just gives you the extra 2 USBs so you can then add the GPS dongle.
The "Pi 2" latest model is not yet supported as it is quite different to the B+ so ensure you don't get one of those yet.

[SteveN]

I guess you could try swapping the position of the dongles in the USB ports.

[IainM]

Ah well, that's the one off the recommended list ordered.  Hopefully that will be it. I did try it in both USB ports, and will try with the B+ Pi when it comes. I've got the right version of Pi with the four ports and case coming from RS as well.

Given the iPad is needed anyway, I was just planning on using that to provide the gps position via the collision aware app, but I see elsewhere on the forum the gps dongle is going to be the preferred solution and that app might be withdrawn. 

[IainM]

Nice new Pi arrived, shame I never noticed I will now need a micro sd card as well... but luckily I've just noticed that the full size card I thought I had is actually a micro in an adaptor.  Sorted...

[IainM]

Got the ADSB bit working OK, interestingly the Realtek DVB-T stick works fine with the Pi B+, but not with the original Pi I first tried.

Anyone know if Runway HD gives collision warnings as well as displaying the traffic?  Was chasing traffic in demo mode but that did not seem to give any alerts, or maybe I wasn't close enough.


screenshot

[Shortwing]

Hi Iain,

Apart from turning Flarm on in runway HD what else did you need to do to get the connection?

[IainM]

Hi,

Just turned on the Enable Flarm slider in Flarm settings, and ticked PilotAware in Select Device further down the same menu.

You also have to make sure your wifi on the iPad is connected to PilotAware in Settings, Wifi on the iPad.

Started working right away.