The balena ADS-B Thread

sadeedp · November 24, 2021, 7:13pm

Thanks Ketil for your valuable time. Let me try with another SD Card with new image.

My wifi is much fast…, I belief may be some issue with the sd card, let me try from start…

Ketil · November 24, 2021, 7:25pm

No worries! It’s always motivating to get new people up and running with this. Yes, it could be a good idea to check that. If the SD card is broken, you might get issues with the downloading.

sadeedp · December 7, 2021, 5:06am

hi,

finally i made it… sharing my antenna coverage screenshot from Flightaware and Radarbox.

kindly suggest what I have to do improve the coverage, now it is average 100nm

Ketil · December 11, 2021, 11:45am

Hi @sadeedp,

Congratulations on getting everything up and running! And 100nm is a quite good starting point.

Improving the range usually comes down to optimizing the hardware such as dongle, filter, antenna and cables. For starters, are you using an indoor or outdoor antenna now?

sadeedp · December 11, 2021, 5:41pm

Hi Ketil,

Good afternoon!

Now the overall range showing 163NM, I am using a colinear antenna with 12 elements of 116cm, some area showing out of coverage because of nearby building and a tree have thick tiny leaves!

Also planning to increase the hight little more and ordered for a SAW filter. I am sing a Noolec NesdrSmart dongle.
My wish to get Dubai area to be in my range.

https://store.uputronics.com/index.php?route=product%2Fproduct&path=59&product_id=50&fbclid=IwAR25lv5eEQa6wVCBpv10Wjqb6J8LWXfFoija-yrwMNadcxdmQkBapT7ufhs

1090MHz ADS-B Filtered Preamp
1090MHz ADS-B Filtered Preamp
store.uputronics.com
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sadeedp · December 12, 2021, 12:41pm

Hi Ketil,

Is there option to add GPS module on Balena ADS-B to have more accuracy on the location.

Ketil · December 13, 2021, 2:29pm

Good work, @sadeedp! It seems you are all set from a technical point of view. Now it’s all about optimization. FlightAware 6.1 will try to find the best antenna gain for you, so you might see coverage improve over time. You could also try to override this manually by setting the DUMP1090_GAIN variable in the balena console to something between 0 and 49.6.

Ketil · December 13, 2021, 2:32pm

Preformatted text`Is there option to add GPS module on Balena ADS-B to have more accuracy on the location.

Not currently, but there is already a feature request for this that you can track here: [Feature Request] Implement GPS-Module support · Issue #19 · ketilmo/balena-ads-b · GitHub

sadeedp · December 14, 2021, 11:24am

Hi Kettil,

I noticed below two links. Is the required changes already customized in your setup to avail maximum gain?

https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/announcing-the-release-of-piaware-6/78967

https://github.com/flightaware/dump1090/blob/master/README.adaptive-gain.md

Ketil · December 14, 2021, 9:51pm

Hi @sadeedp,

Thanks for the heads up. I believed the adaptive gain feature was automatically enabled in version 6, but that turned out not to be the case. The good news: I have enabled it now. All you need to do is redeploy the project using the blue button. Then, make sure to delete the DUMP1090_GAIN variable if you have set it as it will disable the new functionality.

Let us know how it works for you!

sadeedp · December 15, 2021, 4:47am

Hi Ketil,

Good Morning!

Thanks for it, sire will update you how it will work…

Also I would like to share a good news below that my application to host a flight feeder is approved from FA.

dtischler · December 16, 2021, 10:21pm

I missed this thread somehow, looking good @sadeedp and thanks @Ketil as always!

Ketil · December 18, 2021, 7:42pm

That’s great, @sadeedp. And congratulations on securing a Flight Feeder.

I have enabled the adaptive gain on one of my feeders, and the results are promising:

sadeedp · December 23, 2021, 3:16pm

Hi Ketil,

Kindly note the wifi password has been changed by the admin.

Please inform how I can configure the new password in the adsb setup

Ketil · December 24, 2021, 10:16am

Hi @sadeedp,

When the feeder cannot connect to the Internet, for instance, due to a changed Wi-Fi password, the device will provide you with a Wi-Fi hotspot to update the credentials. This function is powered by another excellent balena project: wifi-connect.

See Part 2 in our docs.

Specifically:

If your device comes up without an active connection to the Internet, the wifi-connect container will create a network with a captive portal to connect to a local WiFi network. The SSID for the created hotspot is balenaWiFi And the password is balenaWiFi . When connected, visit http://192.168.42.1:8181/ in your web browser to set up the connection.

If your feeder is connected to Ethernet as well, make sure to unplug it. The Wi-Fi hotspot will only appear when the device is offline.

Good luck!

sadeedp · December 26, 2021, 12:08pm

Hi Ketil,

Please check this error” check_service_restarts”

sadeedp · January 6, 2022, 10:11am

Hi Ketil,

Range decreased to 26nm for few days… what may be the reason,

Ketil · January 8, 2022, 9:54am

Hi @sadeedp,

Service restarts can have several reasons. The best way of debugging them is by filtering the logs on that particular service. You can do that from the Summary dashboard. Hopefully, it will give you some indicators of why this is happening.

Ketil · January 8, 2022, 10:16am

Hi @sadeedp,

This issue could be related to the new auto gain feature in PiAware. You can revert to the former default setting by adding an environment variable DUMP1090_GAIN with the value of -10.

Let us know how it works for you.

sadeedp · January 9, 2022, 3:16pm

Hi Ketil,

I have changed the setting, also added a UPUTRONICS 1090MHz ADS-B Filtered Preamp, now the range showing 214nm