ADS-B / Flightradar 24 setup

[Analoguesat]

I managed to get the pi to connect to plane plotter late last night after a bit of tinkering. (21 day free usage)

No idea if the pi is working as its not plotted anything yet!

Unfortunately the main north south flight route over southern Scotland seems to be well west of here which is the worst possible direction for my mini antenna - the stone built cottage is in the way!

 

[Vipersan]

I managed to get the pi to connect to plane plotter late last night after a bit of tinkering. (21 day free usage)

No idea if the pi is working as its not plotted anything yet!

Unfortunately the main north south flight route over southern Scotland seems to be well west of here which is the worst possible direction for my mini antenna - the stone built cottage is in the way!

Looking forward to seeing some results buddy ..
Get that Antenna made ...
should only take a chap like you a couple of hours ..

 

[Analoguesat]

The adaptor has arrived on the slow boat from China so now I can build a better antenna. When Ive got a few minutes

Even a badly built antenna must perform better than the stubby whip - which hasnt received ANYTHING all day according to plane plotter!

 

[Llew]

Those whips are just decoration, look nice I suppose sitting atop a table or desk. All mine were rubbish except the longer one that came with the NooElec dongle, as long as it was on an extended bit of coax, hanging out the window.

 

[Vipersan]

Those stubby whips are useless for anything but strong FM radio..
You should get _something_ with the easily built 2 loop collinear ..
Just a strip of copper wire with some kinks ..
Antenna thread
Construction details in the above thread..

 

[Analoguesat]

First attempt will be an 8 segment coax colinear.

 

[Vipersan]

First attempt will be an 8 segment coax colinear.

No probs AS ..
This is one time when steel cored copper coated RG6 has the edge over pure copper cored coax ..
I tried making mine with copper at first ..
It bends and breaks too easily when joining the segments....so stick with steel cored..
rgds
VS

 

[Analoguesat]

Hell these 11cm coax bits are ruddy fiddly to poke together!

Tip - make one of the prongs longer than the other when poking the centre cores down the braiding of the other section otherwise you need about three hands!



Also if like me your eyes arent as good as they used to be make sure your bench is well lit or you end up trying to poke the copper prongs into your fingers.......

 

[Analoguesat]

8 segment antenna now hung up outside - tied to the honeysuckle above the living room window as its pissing down and far too horrible to think about setting up properly. I can only see northeast to southeast here but I hope to log something before the weekend is over!

 

[Vipersan]

8 segment antenna now hung up outside - tied to the honeysuckle above the living room window as its pissing down and far too horrible to think about setting up properly. I can only see northeast to southeast here but I hope to log something before the weekend is over!

Another tip ...
Check for shorts and continuity at the end of the antenna as you add each section ..with a meter/beeper
If you complete the build and then find you have a short or an opencircuit ...its a pita to locate it without disassembly..
rgds
VS

 

[Analoguesat]

Yup I did that - all in order.

Not much flying over to the east again though

 

[Llew]

Hell these 11cm coax bits are ruddy fiddly to poke together!

Tip - make one of the prongs longer than the other when poking the centre cores down the braiding of the other section otherwise you need about three hands!



Also if like me your eyes arent as good as they used to be make sure your bench is well lit or you end up trying to poke the copper prongs into your fingers.......

Yes, a longer inner helps to get an initial 'bite' into each piece and makes it easier. My swearing count went down considerably when I had sussed that.

 

[Analoguesat]

Sigh. The SD card (out of the junk box) was set up with a 900 meg null partition for some reason so the pi file structure was completely screwed. Now starting again with it having zapped the old partitions & set a new 1GB partition up.....

 

[Analoguesat]

Yes, a longer inner helps to get an initial 'bite' into each piece and makes it easier. My swearing count went down considerably when I had sussed that.

For info for anyone trying this in the future I cut the coax to 15cm, then trimmed down to the core strip 2 cm each end

 

[Archive-8]

For info for anyone trying this in the future I cut the coax to 15cm, then trimmed down to the core strip 2 cm each end

Can you take a photo or two please? When you have a min.

Thanks.

 

[Analoguesat]

Can you take a photo or two please? When you have a min.

Thanks.

All explained here Chris

Constructing an ADS-B Collinear Antenna

This is the easy bit - getting the pi going is the hard bit!

 

[Vipersan]

All explained here Chris

Constructing an ADS-B Collinear Antenna

This is the easy bit - getting the pi going is the hard bit!

Confucian has this working with Pi ..AS
perhaps he can help ?

 

[Analoguesat]

So heres what Ive done.

Formatted the 1GB micro card
Downloaded the flightradar24 image from the FR24 website
Burned the image to the card using win32 discimager as suggested by fr24.

Booted the pi using the fr card. I can log into the operating system using Putty ok.

Its supposed to be simple to set up..... The supposed graphical interface on port 8080 doesnt work so theres no way of knowing if the damn thing is working or not unless Ive missed summat. Not helped by the fact Im in a low traffic zone anyway.

Ivce tried running plane plotter on the pc but Im getting failed to connect 10061. Start server (BS/ANRB/etc) check details & try again. A pi reboot doesnt do anything so Im a bit lost now.

 

[Analoguesat]

HOORAY!!!! It works!

EZY89WL Edinburgh to Copenhagen

 

[Analoguesat]

I followed these instructions:

http://forum.planefinder.net/threads/raspberry-pi-b-plus-and-model2-installation-instructions-for-raspbian-dump1090-data-feeder.241/

Having downloaded a clean version of raspberry jessy from the pi website & installed it onto an 8gb micro card

I havent installed the FR24 or Planefinder feeder stuff yet, so I only followed the first 3 steps - I wanted to get the damn thing working before I started trying any feeding to sites.

I did have to do the blacklist stuff in step 3 as I got the prior instance error.