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2. Install

skymaker-c2is edited this page Jan 22, 2024 · 15 revisions

Install the OS

Raspberry Pi

On raspberry Pi we strongly recommend the use of the latest release of Raspberry Pi OS.

Our repository contains the needed packages for the latest stable release and the previous one.

As of now we do support 32bit and 64bit systems, but consider 32bit deprecated and will drop support in the future. Therefore we recommend installing a 64bit Raspberry Pi OS

Install the Image from http://raspberrypi.org by using the instructions given there.

Be sure to use the lite image, you do not want a fully fledged desktop environment eating up your PIs CPU power

Add repository

Add our repository:

sudo wget -q -O /usr/share/keyrings/c2is.key https://repo.chaos-consulting.de/c2is.pgp.key
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/c2is.key] https://repo.chaos-consulting.de/debian bullseye main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/c2is.list

Mini PC / Regular PC / Laptop

On a PC with a regular x86_64 CPU we strongly recommend the use of the latest release of Debian or Ubuntu Server Minimal LTS

Our repository contains the needed packages for the latest Debian stable release and the previous one.

You can install these packages on the Ubuntu Server LTS releases as well.

We do only support 64bit systems which covers most of the systems from the last 15 years

Add repository

Add our repository:

sudo wget -q -O /usr/share/keyrings/c2is.key https://repo.chaos-consulting.de/c2is.pgp.key
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/c2is.key] https://repo.chaos-consulting.de/ubuntu jammy main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/c2is.list

Update system

The next steps are the same for both a Raspberry Pi and an x86_64 setup.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Install dump1090-fa

sudo apt-get install dump1090-fa
  • Reboot the Pi and connect via ssh again

NTP

A accurate clock is needed for us. The Pi itself does not contain a realtime clock but NTP will be good enough. Make sure you have a working NTP configuration by typing

timedatectl

The resulting output should look like this

               Local time: Sat 2022-02-26 22:35:33 UTC
           Universal time: Sat 2022-02-26 22:35:33 UTC
                 RTC time: n/a
                Time zone: Etc/UTC (UTC, +0000)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: inactive
          RTC in local TZ: no

Configure dump1090

sudo nano /etc/default/dump1090-fa
  • Set your receiver location
  • To determine the position do not use your mobile phones GPS functionality it can be quite unreliable, instead use a service like openstreetmap.org where you can right click on the map to show the adrees and coordinates
LAT="51.xxxx"
LON="7.yyyyy"

Start dump1090

sudo service dump1090-fa start

Check the output

  • Check the number of planes you receive
cat /run/dump1090-fa/aircraft.json|grep -c hex
  • It is very likely that it wont work, in this case you need to check the log
tail -f /var/log/dump1090-fa.log
  • If you run into the following error message
Please fix the device permissions, e.g. by installing the udev rules file rtl-sdr.rules
  • You need to create a udev rule file for your particular rtl-sdr dongle
  • To do this check the vendor id and product id of your usb dongle
lsusb
  • It will give you a list of all the USB Devices connected similar to the following one
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:2838 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMC9514 Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
  • The vendor id in this case is 0bda and the product id is 2838
  • Now create a rule file
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/rtl-sdr.rules
  • And put the following in it
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0bda", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2838",  MODE="0666"
  • Dont forget to change the vendor and product id to the ones matching your sdr dongle
  • now reboot and check again if you see a number of Planes and if not check the logfile again
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