sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post information or questions regarding SDRplay products here
Post Reply
RiverPatrol1
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm

sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by RiverPatrol1 » Wed Aug 30, 2017 3:16 pm

Has anybody had any success with the latest version (released 4/27/2016) of sdrplay_dump1090 (16bit Mutability version of dump1090 developed by Oliver Jowett) for the Raspberry Pi?

I’m using several Pi 3’s and have set them up with RTL-SDR’s feeding FlightAware and ADSBexchange ADS-B + MLAT data but I’m not getting mlat data back on a test of sdrplay_dump1090 as it is constantly giving piaware log errors such as “Server status: clock unstable”, “Out-of-order timestamps” and PiAware states that “Local ADS-B receiver (dump1090) is not running” although piaware status shows “sdrplay_dump1090 (pid 2272) is listening for connections on port 30005”.

I also don’t see any data\planes on port 8080 (or /public_html per documentation) of the host pi address so I’m not sure if this version has a working HTTP web server. There are several post about the webserver on the sdrplay forum on that but no answers.

It does show up on Virtual Radar Server using Beast port 3005 and it is listening to port 30104 as occasionally Beast port 30105 will get some mlat info from the mlat-client.

All of the port designations are set up to work with PiAware and are showing up as connected and it’s working well except for MLAT which is the only reason to put it on the Pi.

It would also be nice to see an auto-start function for sdrplay_dump1090. I’ve tried to put the line “/usr/local/bin/sdrplay_dump1090 --dev-sdrplay --enable-agc --net --modeac --forward-mlat --quiet --measure-noise --lat 37.xxxxx --lon -76.xxxxx --json-location-accuracy 1 --write-json-every 1 --write-json /run/sdrplay_dump1090” under /etc/rc.local but haven’t gotten that to work so far so I just SSH in and start it.
Last edited by RiverPatrol1 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
Reason: No reason

EA3HUF
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2017 5:52 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by EA3HUF » Wed Aug 30, 2017 6:11 pm

I also don’t see any data\planes on port 8080 (or /public_html per documentation) of the host pi address so I’m not sure if this version has a working HTTP web server. There are several post about the webserver on the sdrplay forum on that but no answers.
The raspi sdrplay_dump1090 installer on the sdrplay web page does not contain the public_html folder. You have to download the folder from the corresponding repository and copy it on /home/pi. The folder I use for my installation is the one indicated in another discussion: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=10#p7300

Reason: No reason

RiverPatrol1
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by RiverPatrol1 » Wed Aug 30, 2017 6:34 pm

Thx, EA3HUF, I'll give that a shot, I must have missed that post on the public_html folder.
Last edited by RiverPatrol1 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
Reason: No reason

RiverPatrol1
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by RiverPatrol1 » Wed Aug 30, 2017 8:15 pm

EA3HUF wrote:
I also don’t see any data\planes on port 8080 (or /public_html per documentation) of the host pi address so I’m not sure if this version has a working HTTP web server. There are several post about the webserver on the sdrplay forum on that but no answers.
The raspi sdrplay_dump1090 installer on the sdrplay web page does not contain the public_html folder. You have to download the folder from the corresponding repository and copy it on /home/pi. The folder I use for my installation is the one indicated in another discussion: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1921&start=10#p7300
Wow, I wrote another response a while ago but it seems all of them need to be approved before they are posted. Anyhow, thx it worked for fixing the http server.

After following your link to the other thread I started looking to your issues with the proper folder for the .json files and if they should be aircraft.json or data.json. Did you get that sorted out?
Last edited by RiverPatrol1 on Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 am, edited 0 times in total.
Reason: No reason

EA3HUF
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2017 5:52 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by EA3HUF » Thu Aug 31, 2017 10:30 am

After following your link to the other thread I started looking to your issues with the proper folder for the .json files and if they should be aircraft.json or data.json. Did you get that sorted out?
Yes. If the public_html folder in the link I indicated to you is working for you, then you are using aircraft.json.
You can check it yourself by editing script.js. On that file there is a function called fetchData(). This function, in previous dump1090 releases, was reading from data.json. In new forks (mutability), the http server code changed a lot and one of the things that changed was this one.

The full history went as follows:

I also found the internal http server was not working. Then I discovered that the public_html folder was not installer during installation (It was not present on the .run compressed installer and there was no mention to it on the .sh script on that installer) (Sdrplay is going to fix this problem soon by updating the .run installer in their download page).

At that moment, Sdrplay support pointed me to a code repository from where to download the folder. I did, and the http web page appeared but was not showing any plane. Then I ran sdrplay_dump1090 with the --debug option and discovered it was trying to read data from data.json. However, when I forced the program to store the json files in a folder (option --write-json) I found that there was no data.json stored but aircraft.json. Searched the web for data.json and aircraft.json and... Bingo!

Sdrplay support gave me the link to the correct pulic_html folder (the one I gave you) and everything started running as expected.

Reason: No reason

RiverPatrol1
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by RiverPatrol1 » Fri Sep 01, 2017 12:21 pm

Thx EA3HUF, I've got everything sorted out except for the piaware log errors such as “Server status: clock unstable”, “Out-of-order timestamps”, etc. Before I spend any more time on that issue I'm going to redo my image without additional feeders (I was feeding to FA and ADSBexchange for mlat) and remove a package that I've been using from a post on FA for the ADSB Receiver Project that provides a lot of performance graphs and such. Once I get the clock errors stable and am, or not getting mlat from FA I'll try to add the other items.

Have you tried to feed mlat data to one of the aviation sites and received mlat data back from them?

Sorry I didn't get back with you sooner but I wasn't able to get back on the forum yesterday until I e-mailed the admin and they fixed something on their end last night.

EDIT: I re-imaged with just the sdrplay_dump1090 and a feed to Flight Aware for MLAT. Still get the timing errors. If your just using this with Virtual Radar Server it will look fine but it won't work like other dump1090 programs for sending MLAT. Maybe someone else has found a solution but at this point I'll wait till the next version.

Reason: No reason

EA3HUF
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2017 5:52 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by EA3HUF » Fri Sep 01, 2017 3:49 pm

No, no experience with mlat. I know the mutability fork has mlat server and client in separate repositories than dump1090 so one must install them separately but no experience doing so nor sendind/recovering the data from global servers.
Have luck with your experiments
Best

Reason: No reason

RiverPatrol1
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by RiverPatrol1 » Fri Sep 01, 2017 5:26 pm

EA3HUF wrote:No, no experience with mlat. I know the mutability fork has mlat server and client in separate repositories than dump1090 so one must install them separately but no experience doing so nor sendind/recovering the data from global servers.
Have luck with your experiments
Best
Yep, all of the flight groups have mlat-client packages that work with a bunch of dump1090 programs but not this one, maybe on the next version.

Reason: No reason

RiverPatrol1
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm

Re: sdrplay_dump1090 on Pi 3 not working with mlat

Post by RiverPatrol1 » Mon Oct 09, 2017 7:06 pm

Just a follow-up on this. I came back to this project and loaded the API and ADSB from SDRplay on Jessie. Then I added the FlightAware add-on feeder PiAware 3.5.1 and started up sdrplay_dump1090 feeding MLAT to FlightAware. Same timing issues coming back from FlightAware and after a couple min. it cut off the MLAT.

I had been using the USB port and the WiFi so that everything wasn't on the same controller on the Pi but I decided to change over to the Ethernet plug and disable the WiFi just for kicks.

Not sure why but everything cleared up and MLAT is working fine. The Pi is only 4' from the wireless router so it wasn't a weak wifi signal and that Pi and 2 others have been using WiFi for network connection for ADSB for several months.

Reason: No reason

Post Reply