At last the weather has warmed up a bit, so it's time to play outdoors!
Thank to the help and advice I've got here on the forum, I now have 3 Rpi's setup to feed 4 tracking providers (yes, that's 4 per Rpi). Two of these Rpi's are 3B's with on-board wifi, so I though I'd have a go operating one on wifi. The other 2 are wired ethernet connections.
Setting up the wifi using raspi-config was simple and unplugging the ethernet cable and rebooting had it feeding without any issues. So, I've now got a 'portable' ADS-B receiver I can position anywhere within my wifi coverage. However, I wanted to get the antenna more out in the open and clear of any structures, so this is where my portable 3G 'mifi' unit came in handy. The simple solution would have been to just change the Rpi wifi setting to connect to the mifi broadcast, but I was already using an amateur radio solution which employs a travel router as a 'bridge' receiving the wifi but having an ethernet cable output.
In the picture, you can see the Rpi being powered by a small portable power bank. The travel router is also powereb the same way and connected to the Rpi by a short ethernet cable. The 3G mifi is on the left, running off it's internal battery which gives it 8 hours or so of use. I've no ides how much data the feeders will use, but it's a 12 month 12Gb 3G data sim that expires at midnight tonight, so I might as well use it up. The 'tuna-tin' antenna finishes off the setup.
As for the performance, comparing the total from dump1090 running at the same time:
- This setup with the tuna-tin antenna: 77 aircraft being tracked
- Indoor SBS-1 antenna (my 'best performing' setup): 61 aircraft
- Indoor but on a window-ledge with a 30cm 'springy' mag-mount: 44 aircraft tracked
Range coverage is still building up, but I'm getting a average of 100 miles but out to 180 miles in some directions.
I have a 1090MHz filter arriving today, so it will be interesting to see what difference this makes.
