SquawkBox now has filters and alerts

Andy Frost · November 24, 2008, 10:19:58 AM

Following a suggestion from one of the guys on the SBS forum who also use SquawkBox I've added filters and alerts to the program. This means that you can now get SquawkBox to display just those codes you are interested in e.g. military. In addition individual squawk codes or groups of squawk codes can be defined as alerts so that the program issues an alert (e.g. sound, flashing window) when a squawk code within that group is detected. Note that RadarBox also does alerts on individual Squawk codes. Usual download at http://www.gfrost.co.uk/SquawkBox/

Tailwinds · November 24, 2008, 01:24:01 PM

Andy...

I already have your Squawkbox from a couple of weeks ago so do I uninstall the previous Squawkbox and install the newer one?

Thanks.

EDIT..

Ok, just simply re-installed. My sincere thanks to you Andy for these added features.

Regards.

Andy Frost · November 24, 2008, 02:14:55 PM

yes, Tailwinds, It's just a case of unzipping to overwrite the existing files.

Tailwinds · November 24, 2008, 05:21:26 PM

How can I get Squawkbox to alert me on certain aircraft such as registration ZF573 and ZE701? I typed in the two squawk codes for the above mentioned aircraft and chose the flashing window. However, I didn't get the alert from Squawkbox because the Squawk codes had changed which I found out from looking at "My Flights" in ANRB 2009. I'm obviously not doing something right.

Thanks.

viking9 · November 24, 2008, 05:52:59 PM

Tailwinds,

Squawk codes are not unique to aircraft. They are associated with airspace areas and other things. It's the Mode-S hex code that is unique to an aircraft.

Tom

DaveReid · November 24, 2008, 06:16:39 PM

One of the drivers behind the development of Mode S was the shortage of Mode A ("squawk") codes. There are only 4096 of the latter available, far too few even for the number of aircraft in the UK, let alone worldwide. Mode S gets round that limitation by providing for 16.7 million codes which can therefore be assigned to specific aircraft rather than continually being re-allocated on an ad hoc basis.

Andy Frost · November 24, 2008, 07:02:11 PM

Tailwinds, SquawkBox only provides alerts on particular squawk codes or groups of squawk codes. If you want an alert on an aircraft registration or a ModeS value you can set this up in the Alerts section of the RadarBox Interface Panel.

markb · November 28, 2008, 07:48:39 PM

Does anyone have any information on where to find squawk code allocation info for the US? There's FAA Order 7110.65, but it is very general in nature with a few exceptions.

thanks,
Mark

Andy Frost · December 01, 2008, 01:50:35 PM

At the request of one of the guys on the SBS forum I have today added a facility for SquawkBox to remember where it was put and have it startup in that position on the next start. This means that you don't have to accept the default startup position which was between the RadarBox "File...Help" menu and the RadarBox logo. This is set via a menu option, details in the ReadMe file. This new version can be unzipped over any previous version to install it.

Allocator · December 04, 2008, 10:18:03 PM

Andy,

Thanks for all your work with SquawkBox. I've got it up and running OK, but I'm having trouble with the "Include Flights without a Flight Number" - although I've got this box ticked in options, I'm not seeing any flights in the SquawkBox window other than those with Flight ID's.

This means that I'm not getting the military flights showing as many of these don't have callsigns/Flight ID. Am I missing something?

besty · December 04, 2008, 10:25:17 PM

I've just got my radarbox back and I'm having the same trouble as Allocator with the squawkbox not showing non callsign flights. Hope it's something simple.

tarbat · December 04, 2008, 10:43:43 PM

Allocator, you won't see any aircraft without ADS/B, as they're not output on port 30003. Try using a recording file instead, although that's 5-minute delayed of course :(

Allocator · December 04, 2008, 10:51:40 PM

That would explain it, shame, I was hoping for a quick way of reading the mil squawks :-(

tarbat · December 04, 2008, 10:58:52 PM

I know. That's why I asked Andy to include reading a recording file, but because of the 5-minute delay, it's not that useful. Of course, v2.1 will make port 30003 less useful as well :(

What I do with military aircraft is still use port 30003, and manually type the military squawk codes into the "Look up a squawk code" box.

I just wish Airnav would include squawk code lookup in Radarbox!! It's obviously a useful feature, given how popular Andy's Squawkbox is.

Andy Frost · December 05, 2008, 10:17:25 AM

Yes tarbat, delaying the Port 30003 data by 5 minutes will make SquawkBox less interesting. The best solution from the point of view of SquawkBox and any other third party add-on programs that want to get flight data from RadarBox would be to have RadarBox output the contents of the MyFlights table but without the positional information. This as I understand it would not be a security issue because the positional data is not present and so would not need to be delayed.

Oh, by the way, at the request of one of the guys on the SBS forum I've updated SquawkBox to provide the possibility to scroll flights vertically as well as horizontally.