Piaware

Installing and running Piaware

Intro

A little fun project using a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a DVBT stick running the flightaware software.

Make sure (if it is your first) to have a set including connectors and a poweradaptor with 5.1v output.

If you plan for a mobile setup, make sure the powerbank provides the 5,1v output.

Since i'm on a budget i start out with the Raspberry Pi Zero W

Getting started

Put the Raspberry together, much like lego.

Download the software from flightaware

wget http://piaware.flightcdn.com/piaware-sd-card-3.8.1.img.zip

Unzip the file and cd into the piaware-sd-card-3.8.1.img folder (yes it is a folder..)

Check for your SD card

lsblk

Mine seems to be /dev/mmcblk0 device which is mounted at /media/phenixops/disk

mmcblk0                     179:0    0    15G  0 disk  
└─mmcblk0p1                 179:1    0    15G  0 part  /media/phenixops/disk

Make sure the card contains NO files, they will ALL BE LOST WHEN YOU CONTINUE!

From the folder, copy the image to the card using dd
phenixops@phenix:/home/phenixops/Downloads/piaware-sd-card-3.8.1.img# dd bs=4M if=piaware-sd-card-3.8.1.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 conv=fsync

Configuring the Wifi

After the image has been copied (you might have to reseat the SD card) you can edit the configuration to enable wifi

Edit the piaware-config.txt file you will find on the sdcard
vi piaware-config.txt

Set your SSID/Password

Change the part with the wireless-ssid and wireless password to what goes for your network

wireless-ssid YourSSID
wireless-password Blablabla

(Make sure you enter the details of your phone's hotspot if you want to take it outside..)

Next pop out the SD card and put it into the Raspberry Pi

Checking the network

Login to your wifi router and check for the newly added addres
Make sure it is broadcasting 802.11n as the Raspberry Pi does not support other protocols

Enable SSH

This is more related to Raspbian but hey we all need ssh

At this point you just need to create a file called ssh, with no content

In the boot folder on the SD create a file called ssh
/boot# touch ssh

Reboot the Raspberry. ssh will become available after the restart
Check on your local router which device has been added to find out what the ip is.

One note, the Raspberry Pi Zero does not support 5G wifi.

Login using SSH

You can login with these credentials:

user:  pi 
pass: flightware

Change the password to a better one as it is a default

Troubleshooting

setting the feeder id

Somehow this is not set right upon install, i found the solution

sudo piaware-config feeder-id 7a3b295a-489e-4b91-9c9d-4c778e71c925

User your own, you can find it using:
piaware -showtraffic

Bad Tuners

Unfortunately my first attempt to setup did not work, while the software was doing it's task. No messages were being send to the flightaware server. It took me quite some time to check if things were in the right place. Ports available, processes being started. I spend quite some time to test everything and documented it. When i posted a message to the flightaware forum, wiedehopf pointed out that the tuner on my dongle does not work on the 1090 band.

So i was happy to find out there was nothing wrong with my setup yet i really wanted to see things working. But it became a free crashcourse on Piaware and troubleshooting is fun.

These tuners will not work. Check using rtl_test

Fitipower FT0012
Fitipower FT0013

Usefull tools and commands for troubleshooting

Piaware config and if is active

piaware-status 
piaware-config
piaware -showtraffic
tail -f /var/log/piaware.log

Check ports, should be listening<pr>

netstat -tulpn|less

Check if your device is present or perhaps dropped out of service due to low power

lsusb

And finally a physical check to see if the dongle is in the data port on your Raspberry Zero..