Install ADSB Exchange, Flightratar24 and PiAware feeder on Raspberry Pi

6 months ago
sef
3 minutes

You will need a Raspberry Pi 4, an SD card of at least. 64GB and an ADS-B receiver. First, we will install the ADS-B Exchange image on the SD card. Download the latest image available on the ADSB Exchange website. As of this writing, the latest version available for download is v9.0.240503, however, after downloading the archive 5x, I was presented with an extraction error 79, even though the MD5 hash was correct. Therefore, I will advise you to install v8.2.220910. Once downloaded, unpack the img file, start the Raspberry Pi imager, load the SD card, and write the image, without applying the custom OS configuration.

Once Raspberry Pi is up and running, connect to the wifi network ADSBx-config. Beware that the wifi network is available only for 15 minutes for initial configuration. Once connected, change the default password “adsb123” and connect the feeder to the network. Note: When configuring wifi, select the option to specify the network name (SSID). Once the system is rebooted, ssh (user pi) into the feeder (port 22) and do the following:

  1. Change the default SSH port
  2. Create a new user without sudo privileges
  3. Create a root password
  4. Install aptitude, vim, whiptail, and the network-manager
  5. Run raspi-config and configure keyboard layout and the default network management app under Advanced Settings
  6. Stop and disable dhcpcd to prevent future conflicts
  7. Configure a static IP address by running nmtui (connect to wifi again)
  8. Install all the available updates aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade

Once done with the initial configuration, copy the adsb-config.txt file from backup to /boot/ directory and reboot the feeder. Visit the Feeder Status Page and note down the Feed UUID. Unlink the old feeder from the feeder list. We will link the new one in about 15 minutes.

The next step is to configure Flightradar24 feeder. To install the feeder run the following command:

# wget -qO- https://fr24.com/install.sh | sudo bash -s

Once installation is done, complete the configuration with the following options:

  1. Sharing key (look into the fr24feed.ini file)
  2. Receiver type: Beast Network (tcp)
  3. Receiver host: 127.0.0.1
  4. Receiver port: 30005
  5. BS: No
  6. Raw: No
  7. Mlat: No
  8. Mlat without GPS: No

Confirm that Flightradar24 feed is up and running in your statistics page and by opening http://your_IP_address:8754 in your browser

The last step is to install and configure PiAware. Since we are running other flight trackers on the system, we need to install only the feeder.

# wget https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/files/packages/pool/piaware/f/flightaware-apt-repository/flightaware-apt-repository_1.2_all.deb 
# dpkg -i flightaware-apt-repository_1.2_all.deb

Now we need to update the repositories:

# aptitude update
# aptitude install -y piaware

Enable PiAware automatic updates:

# piaware-config allow-auto-updates yes

If this is the first time installing PiAware, reboot your system and claim your feeder under the FlightAware Feeder Claim page. If this is a reinstallation, or if you have moved your feeder to another system, find your feeder UUID under Site Information for the specific feeder (Unique Identifier) and copy the UUID. Run the following command to add the UUID to piaware config file:

# piaware-config feeder-id aef7116f-e0da-XXXX-XXXX-67e8c47dba0b

Now, restart the entire system and confirm that your PiAware feeder is sharing data. Look under Site Information for the specific feeder.

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