AirNav Systems Forum

AirNav Radar => AirNav Radar Discussion => Topic started by: airluis on February 13, 2021, 07:01:49 PM

Title: Two home receivers feeding , merge possible?
Post by: airluis on February 13, 2021, 07:01:49 PM

Good afternoon,

I live in a 9th floor, I can't install an antenna in the top of the building so I have 2 receivers (Rasperry pi), one in the balcony facing south and the other one in the balcony facing north. Using Virtual Radar Server I merge both receivers and I can see all traffic around me in one map, in VRS, works fine.

For RB24 I have setup the receiver facing south, I'm feeding ok with no problem. Now I wanted to feed also RB24 with the receiver facing north but I don't know if it's possible. I'm afraid of a possible conflict between the 2 receivers when both feeding at the same to RB24, may I remeber that in Virtual Radar Server it works perfectly.

Do you know if this can be made? I mean viewing all traffic feeded by both receivers in one single station map?

Thanks, best regards,
Luis

Title: Re: Two home receivers feeding , merge possible?
Post by: Runway 31 on February 13, 2021, 07:38:02 PM

Hi Luis

Unless you can find a way of merging the two feeds into one  you would need to have two seperate stations

Alan

Title: Re: Two home receivers feeding , merge possible?
Post by: airluis on February 13, 2021, 08:36:18 PM

Hi Alan,

Thanks for your reply, I know the basics only, so I'll just leave it as it is, for the time being.

Best regards,
Luis

Title: Re: Two home receivers feeding , merge possible?
Post by: abcd567 on February 16, 2021, 10:15:56 AM

Merging is possible and not difficult.
It can be done by
(1) Installing ModeSMixer2 on one RPi and configuring it to pull data from the two Pis, and serve merged data on a port from which rbfeeder can grab it
https://github.com/abcd567a/mm2/blob/master/README.md

OR

(2) Creating a data pipe over network between two Pi's using software socat

But first of all you must give more details of your installation.
Which decoder you are using on these two RPi's? integral decoder of rbfeeder or you have installed yourself a decoder like dump1090-fa or dump1090-mutability?

Which model of RPi  you use: RPi Model 2 or 3 or 4?
Which OS you are using: Raspbian Buster or Piaware image or Pi24 image?

Title: Re: Two home receivers feeding , merge possible?
Post by: abcd567 on February 18, 2021, 04:38:41 PM

If you have installed dump1090-fa or dump1090-mutability on both the North and South Pi, then to merge do following steps on receiver on which you have installed RB24 feeder.

In your case the RB24 is setup on the receiver facing South, so you have to do all this on South receiver. Note that nothing is to be done on North receiver.

(1) Install socat

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install socat

(2) Create a new blank service file for socat-pipe

Code: [Select]

sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/socat-pipe.service   


(3) Copy-paste following code in the newly created blank file
NOTE:
(1) Replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX by other Pi's Local IP (in your case North receiver's Local IP)

(2) SCROLL DOWN TO SEE AND COPY FULL CODE

Code: [Select]

# socat-pipe service for systemd

[Unit]
Description=socat-pipe to pull data from another Pi
Wants=network.target
After=network.target

[Service]
RuntimeDirectory=socat-pipe
RuntimeDirectoryMode=0755
ExecStart=/usr/bin/socat -u tcp:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:30005 tcp:127.0.0.1:30004
SyslogIdentifier=socat-pipe
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
RestartPreventExitStatus=64
Nice=-5

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target


(4) Save file (Ctrl+O) and Close File (Ctrl+X)

(5) Enable and start socat-pipe service

Code: [Select]

sudo systemctl enable socat-pipe

sudo systemctl start socat-pipe

(6) Wait for few minutes then check status

Code: [Select]

journalctl -e -u socat-pipe   

(7) Check this Pi's Map in browser (South receiver in your case)

(8) Use following commands to start, stop, rerstart and check status of merging through socat-pipe

Code: [Select]

sudo systemctl start socat-pipe 
sudo systemctl stop socat-pipe 
sudo systemctl restart socat-pipe 
sudo systemctl status socat-pipe 

TO UNINSTALL

Code: [Select]

sudo systemctl stop socat-pipe 
sudo systemctl disable socat-pipe 
sudo rm /usr/lib/systemd/system/socat-pipe.service