Hi all,
I've been wanting to plot live aircraft on google maps for a while, and i'm well on my way to achieving that. I set myself a little project broken up into 2 stages a while back, and stage one is pretty well complete.
Stage 1: Create a backend using Visual Basic .Net 2008 that listens to port 30003 of the RB, and parses the data stream. It then looks up the received info in the Navdata.db3 and outputs all the aircraft info an .xml file.
Stage 2: Create the frontend either by Visual Basic .Net 2008, or a web interface that utilizes the data in the xml file to then plot the data on google maps.
I'm mentioning this here because so far, the backend is running nicely for me, and thought someone else might find it useful.
There's a few caveats that I need to explain first.
1. I'm only a hobby programmer learning as I go so I can't make guarantees everything will run smoothly for you.
2. I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect the licensed control i'm using has a bit of a memory leak. I suspect this because I created an empty VB project with only the component and a connection to an incoming stream using SBSSim, and the memory usage tended to creep up. I've overcome this issue though by using a freely available tiny program called Minimem from Kerkia which optimises the memory. Works a treat and my program has been happily running for weeks now un-interupted.
3. The database being used is the Navdata.db3 but a slightly modified version (removed some fields, and changed a field type). The database is kept in the application directory so it shouldn't interfere with the RB and it's data. I did this because I wanted a custom field, and found it difficult to access the db properly for making changes if the RB was running and using the database. I also figured the program will be running unattended anyway, so I don't really need to use the RB version. The other reason for supplying the database is that this way it doesn't matter which device you use.
4. The program only lists aircraft that have location information. As this project is to plot on google maps there was no reason to list anything apart from location based data.
5. Because I am using licensed components, I'm unable to provide source code.
6. You need to run the RB software, or Basestation software prior to running the program.
7. The program currently does exactly what I need so unless I can come up with a really good reason, I probably won't be making any substantial changes. The program is offered as is in the hope others may find it useful.
8. In the below output example, the Usertag is the CO field in the NavData.db3 Aircraft table. (This is the field I modified to a text field). You can put anything you like in this field and it will be output if the aircraft is visible.
The output looks like this:
<AircraftInfo>
<Aircraft>
<ModeS>7C6D22</ModeS>
<Callsign>VOZ885</Callsign>
<Aircraft_Registration>VH-VUC</Aircraft_Registration>
<Aircraft_Type>Boeing 737-8FE</Aircraft_Type>
<Airline>Virgin Blue Airlines</Airline>
<Latitude>-33.8196</Latitude>
<Longitude>151.1431</Longitude>
<Groundspeed>194.9</Groundspeed>
<Track>168.5</Track>
<Vertical_Rate>-1216</Vertical_Rate>
<Altitude>2250</Altitude>
<Squawk>3771</Squawk>
<Usertag>Nil Data</Usertag>
<Route_Origin>YMML</Route_Origin>
<Route_Destination>YSSY</Route_Destination>
<Route_Via>Nil Data</Route_Via>
</Aircraft>
</AircraftInfo>
The output can be found in a subdirectory of the application directory called AircraftData and the xml file is called aircraft.xml. You can change the full path by modifying an xml file in the application directory called flighttracker.exe.config.
If there is no data such as a route in the database, the output will contain Nil Data.
Anyway, If anyone is interested in trying it out, you can download it, but i'm not sure if I can post the link here so it's probably better to private message me and i'll let you know a link to download it.
Geoff
BTW.. You need to ensure you have the .net 2.0 framework installed on your PC.
You can see a screenshot at
http://www.gleff.com/flighttrackerscreen.jpg1. Shows the number of aircraft with location data that you can expect to see in the XML file
2. Shows raw data regardless of whether it has location data.
