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-   -   Stratus wanna-be (Stratux) (https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=128742)

ccrawford 09-01-2015 05:54 PM

If you can tell us what you are doing and where you get stuck we can probably provide some pointers. You might re-read/re-follow the tutorial to make sure you didn't miss a step.

Fracrat 09-02-2015 06:32 AM

Confused
 
Does this work with garmin pilot app?

Charles C 09-02-2015 10:12 AM

Thanks for the help.
 
Thanks Ben for your input on what I was doing wrong. I have completed the software and can see it on my Forflight. Now it is time to try it out tonight if the weather is clear and to see how it will work in a helicopter (just because that is what I will be in tonight for work).

Thanks once again.

catmandu 09-02-2015 01:50 PM

Finally got all the requisite parts delivered, $92 all in since I had the battery pack. Assembly and programming took about 25 minutes mostly because my DSL is not too speedy for downloading. Plugged in the Kamashi, lights on the Pi2 eventually went to the expected green flash. Had my iPad wifi connect to 'STRATUX' and then started WingX. Got a good connection, showing 24 hour old internet weather. Left it that way, and headed out to do errands with the rig in tow.

Found myself an ADS-B tower, hope I am within range:



Unlocked the iPad and had to wait about three minutes, but eventually got local traffic:



Then tapped into the weather and saw that it had, in fact, updated itself:



I like it, suits the current need I had in the RV, and very promising to serve future needs (already ordered the GPS/AHRS chip in anticipation of future upgrades).

Mad science is fun!

humptybump 09-02-2015 02:55 PM

great news Mike !

I do believe you were withing reasonable range of a tower.

I've joined the Stratux dev contributors and am working on the webUI. It's a small piece but its something.

for anyone who has built a Stratux, and for those considering it, keep an eye on the release page

https://github.com/cyoung/stratux/releases

there will be many good things showing up over the next few weeks!

roadrunner20 09-02-2015 05:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PCHunt (Post 1008851)
I have successfully displayed traffic and weather on my iFly 740 using this Stratux setup.

In the ifly menu for connected devices, select "FreeFlight", and it appears to work.

Very happy on the first trial, but lots to learn yet.

Happy to see it's working on iFly.
For $105, I thought I'd try it out while I'm waiting for Navworx to finally ship their product.:rolleyes:

humptybump 09-02-2015 05:25 PM



I finally received my more compact battery which fits inside a low cost HDD storage case. Compact. Self contained.

petehowell 09-02-2015 09:02 PM

I'm in!
 
Kinda crazy not to build one! $29 Pi2 from local microcenter, $21 SDR from Prime, Wifi button I had, but are $10 on Prime. I have usb power on the panel and with ADSB out, 978 only gets me the traffic via TIS-B (might miss some 1090 air to air, tho)

Kate and I took her up tonight and GDL39 was a-scared, very a-scared.

Metars--- Pi Gizmo - check || GDL - check

Traffic--- Pi Gizmo- check || GDL - check

5 Towers at 1000ft AGL --- Pi Gizmo- check || GDL - check


Heck, Pi Gizmo is pulling in the KSGS tower from my back porch! The GDL cant do that!(Update - the GDL can do this with the antenna in a slightly diff location) I'll work on a case next - the kids want to make one out of Legos..... What cool gift for a new aviator for a very reasonable price!

Got a couple of longer XC flights this weekend to check performance.

This is a cakewalk on the geek scale - just do it!








humptybump 09-03-2015 04:36 AM

Very cool Pete!

I think case ideas will be an opportunity for some EAB creativity :-)

Brantel 09-03-2015 05:58 AM

Been using RPI's to build ADS-B receivers (using basically the same hardware) to decode and send tracking info to FlightAware and FlightRadar24. They work great for this purpose.

Looks like I am going to have to burn me another SD card and give this one a try!

humptybump 09-03-2015 06:35 AM

Brian, it's a fun project and there is enough interest (and GitHub contribution) that it's is maturing well. I expect the quality of the data is mostly stable now and the work is on software stability, usability, and features.

There is also growing activity around designing cases for the components. A few 3D printable cases are popping up and going through iterations. People are also finding ways to use generic cases efficiently.

exsterminator 09-04-2015 09:11 AM

Help please: if the software is loaded, 4 towers are showing on Foreflight and I can see our aircraft moving, suggestions as to why we cannot see any other aircraft in the vicinity?

We had traffic fly by us about 2000 feet away and it did not register, and we were close to SFO International airport . . .

Assume this is something very straightforward that we overlooked.

dynonsupport 09-04-2015 09:43 AM

Daniel,
ADS-B is only designed to receive traffic reliably if you are in an aircraft equipped with ADS-B OUT. Stratux is only ADS-B in, so your experience is expected. You'll have the same experience when flying unless your airplane has a ADS-B OUT transponder or UAT.

okei 09-04-2015 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by exsterminator (Post 1011522)
Help please: if the software is loaded, 4 towers are showing on Foreflight and I can see our aircraft moving, suggestions as to why we cannot see any other aircraft in the vicinity?

We had traffic fly by us about 2000 feet away and it did not register, and we were close to SFO International airport . . .

Assume this is something very straightforward that we overlooked.


Do you see any traffic at all? Maybe you don't have the traffic layer enabled in ForeFlight? It isn't enabled by default and it appears AFTER you connect to the device.

boom3 09-04-2015 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dynonsupport (Post 1011532)
Daniel,
ADS-B is only designed to receive traffic reliably if you are in an aircraft equipped with ADS-B OUT. Stratux is only ADS-B in, so your experience is expected. You'll have the same experience when flying unless your airplane has a ADS-B OUT transponder or UAT.

This is something I don't have my head totally around. I mean I get it, but I don't. What happens if you fly right next to your buddy that has ADS-B OUT? Would you receive all the traffic then? What if your buddy was 10 miles away?
What if some other guy in the your general vicinity has ADS-B OUT? I guess I just don't get the waking up the ground stations part.

Brantel 09-04-2015 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boom3 (Post 1011540)
This is something I don't have my head totally around. I mean I get it, but I don't. What happens if you fly right next to your buddy that has ADS-B OUT? Would you receive all the traffic then? What if your buddy was 10 miles away?
What if some other guy in the your general vicinity has ADS-B OUT? I guess I just don't get the waking up the ground stations part.

There are specs about how big the bubble is around an aircraft broadcasting but I doubt it is actually that well defined in reality.

My experience is that yes, my wingmen can get traffic if they fly with me even though they are not broadcasting.

Have not tested how far away from me that works but since the ground stations are omni directional, I bet is works for some distance.

At Osh, I kept receiving traffic all the way to the field even though I turned off my xponder 30 miles out. That means someone else was waking up the ground stations besides me.....

dynonsupport 09-04-2015 02:46 PM

ADS-B ground stations send out traffic for 15 miles around aircraft they know about and +/- 5,000' of the aircraft. They only do this on the frequency the aircraft can receive on ADS-B IN.

You can "piggyback" on another ADS-B out plane. But if you are 12 miles ahead of and 4,000' above that plane, you can only see planes 3 miles ahead and 1,000' above. And this assumes the other plane has the same ADS-B IN that you do. If they don't have ADS-B IN or have it on 1090 and you're 978, it doesn't do anything for you.

Almost no Airliners are ADS-B out (about 3%) and none of them are ADS-B IN, so they aren't useful to wake up ground stations.

Even worse, if the plane has dual band ADS-B in, ADS-B OUT targets won't be re-broadcast so you can miss some targets even when the ground station is woken up and it looks like you have coverage.

In reality, this means you can't rely on traffic at all unless you have ADS-B out yourself.

JimS 09-04-2015 04:46 PM

Has anyone had any luck using this setup with FltPln.com on a Nexus7?

humptybump 09-04-2015 04:55 PM

At the risk of VAF rules drift, there is a post on reddit that implies someone is using it with FltPlan Go.

https://www.reddit.com/r/stratux/com...an_go_traffic/

This VAF thread is great but I also encourage people interested in Stratux to follow the reddit subgroup which has become the primary source of information after the GitHub source repository and image download site.

Scrabo 09-04-2015 06:59 PM

There is a new image just posted a few hours ago.

http://imgur.com/HAoNwiV


1090ES on/off toggle - working now.

Interface improvements.

Data replay - stops sending data when app is not in foreground or iPad screen is off. Buffers data and sends it when app is in the foreground and screen is on again.

Callsign / tail number for TIS-B traffic. (ie removes "u" & "e" from tail numbers)

Here's mine with only cable tidy up and a container to do.

http://imgur.com/HAoNwiV

GTWreck 09-04-2015 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scrabo (Post 1011654)
There is a new image just posted a few hours ago.

http://imgur.com/HAoNwiV

http://imgur.com/HAoNwiV

I installed this image and took it out to the hanger and fired up my panel mounted G3X+GDL39 and compared the traffic to the Stratus and Foreflight. The Stratux was picking up a couple extra targets that the GDL-39 wasn't seeing. Granted, the GDL-39 antenna is on the bottom of the plane. I also saw targets as far as 100nm away (@FL390). Overall, I'm fairly impressed with the range just using it on the ground.

The display in Foreflight is much improved over the last Stratux image. N-numbers and relative altitudes are displaying correctly.

Scrabo 09-04-2015 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GTWreck (Post 1011660)
I installed this image and took it out to the hanger and fired up my panel mounted G3X+GDL39 and compared the traffic to the Stratus and Foreflight. The Stratux was picking up a couple extra targets that the GDL-39 wasn't seeing. Granted, the GDL-39 antenna is on the bottom of the plane. I also saw targets as far as 100nm away (@FL390). Overall, I'm fairly impressed with the range just using it on the ground.

The display in Foreflight is much improved over the last Stratux image. N-numbers and relative altitudes are displaying correctly.

Agree, it seems better overall and being able to disable the u and e prefixes on traffic cleans the screen up.

humptybump 09-04-2015 08:08 PM

It's pretty impressive and it hasn't even hit its 1.0 release yet!

One of the big improvements will be the "read-only" SD card work. It will insure long term stability of the unit over many many flights.

If this sounds confusing, just remember that disconnecting the battery at the end of your flight is like turning off you home computer by pulling the plug out of the wall. :eek:

I'll definitely plan an update and flight this weekend!

David_Nelson 09-04-2015 08:25 PM

For your consideration
 
Hi Everybody,

Already having an ADS-B solution (NavWorx and AFS-4500), it didn't seem to make sense to duplicate the work that the NavWorx was doing (receiving and decoding ADS-B messages). So I took the StraTux project and substituted the NavWorx for the SDR and gen_gdl90 program. I wrote a simple Python script that essentially listens on the NavWorx's RS-232 TX line and re-broadcasts the ADS-B messages via WiFi so that ForeFlight Mobile (FFM) could take it in.

Things that don't seem to work just quite right:
- GPS Altitude. As noted in the bottom left corner of the FFM pictures as '-------'.
- Traffic positions appear delayed. Comparing the AFS-4500's display with what I saw out the window with what I saw on FFM, the AFS-4500 and actual won hands down. On one occasion, a jet landing into Austin was way off my left wingtip and several thousand feet higher. The AFS display had it spot on. FFM had it way behind and to my left.
- Traffic altitudes were off compared to the AFS-4500 display. At most they seemed about 1000 ft off. This may coincide with the lack of 'GPS Altitude' mentioned earlier.
- Course was delayed. Prior to reaching KSOA, I made a U-Turn. It took FFM maybe 30-60 seconds before it showed the correct course.

What seems to work but has not been confirmed as accurate:
- SIGMETs and AIRMETs
- WX RADAR and looping
- Surface Winds

As this was my first foray into FFM and ADS-B, I may have other info available that I don't know how to access/display properly. For example, at times I was receiving data from three ADS-B antennas but I don't know how to display their location.

Some screen shots I got today:

http://caura.homenet.org/gallery/d/28935-2/IMG_0060.PNG

http://caura.homenet.org/gallery/d/28939-2/IMG_0061.PNG

http://caura.homenet.org/gallery/d/28942-2/IMG_0062.PNG

To make this work, I used:
- A copy of StraTux - mainly for the WiFI Access Point work.
- RPi Model B
- RS-232 / USB Dongle
- Cigarette Lighter to USB Power Adaptor to power the RPi
- Some wire, connectors, and a DB-9 that plugs into the above RS-232 / USB Dongle

During development, I used a USB / RS-232 dongle that plugs into the RPi's GPIO pins.
Bear in mind that this is highly alpha level stuff and nothing about it is guaranteed. If you are interested in helping out, drop me a line and I'll share the source code and any notes.

Today's test flight was about 1.5 hours. I am planning on going to the Bad Lands fly-in , WX permitting, and I intend on taking this contraption and seeing how it does for the long haul (about 6.5 hours).

Question to the folks using StraTux: Have you compared FFM's ADS-B display with a known good ADS-B display solution?

Regards,

roadrunner20 09-04-2015 10:28 PM

Received my hardware today.
Using a MacBookPro, I didn't have any luck installing the OS with the stratux image. Multiple issues with the SD write protect tab(had to apply tape), then formatting issues, then pi filler not able to find SD even though it was present. Will start over tomorrow from scratch.

Oh & I also got taboola adware from the downloads that keeps popping up a tab in Safari. :mad:

GTWreck 09-05-2015 03:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roadrunner20 (Post 1011700)
Received my hardware today.
Using a MacBookPro, I didn't have any luck installing the OS with the stratux image. Multiple issues with the SD write protect tab(had to apply tape), then formatting issues, then pi filler not able to find SD even though it was present. Will start over tomorrow from scratch.

Oh & I also got taboola adware from the downloads that keeps popping up a tab in Safari. :mad:

I had a similar problem using Pi Filler on MacOS. I fell back to using the terminal and the 'dd' program to write the image out.

Information here should help you out. If you're not comfortable figuring out which disk of the SD card, then you may not want to do this, as writing to the wrong disk device can potentially corrupt your hard disk.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/document...-images/mac.md

humptybump 09-05-2015 06:06 AM

Thanks Aaron!

I'm not a Mac owner so I was looking for instructions online.

I found a wiki page that has several options for writing an "image" to an SD card for raspberry pi.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup

roadrunner20 09-05-2015 06:45 AM

Thank you Aaron.I will give a try later today.

sprucemoose 09-05-2015 07:17 AM

Issues with Pi Filler
 
I too have had hit and miss success with Pi Filler for Mac. Try ApplePi Baker, which does the same thing and seems to work more reliably.

http://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware...pple-pi-baker/

catmandu 09-05-2015 11:45 AM

Burned the new image this morning and took it out for a 2.5 cross-country. Attached the stock antenna to the canopy strut. Solid signal and information, better than my XGPS170 in the other plane performs. Had to restart twice airborne, but that was a function of the flaky, way too long power cord I was using. Need to find a nice short cord with 90* connections on each end.

okei 09-05-2015 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sprucemoose (Post 1011743)
I too have had hit and miss success with Pi Filler for Mac. Try ApplePi Baker, which does the same thing and seems to work more reliably.

http://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware...pple-pi-baker/



Pi Filler works great for me. I found that the trick was to not insert the SD card until it gets to the point where it says "Looking for SD card..." Otherwise it won't find it on my MacBook Air.

roadrunner20 09-05-2015 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by okei (Post 1011781)
Pi Filler works great for me. I found that the trick was to not insert the SD card until it gets to the point where it says "Looking for SD card..." Otherwise it won't find it on my MacBook Air.

Thank you Okei.
That did the trick. It found the SD card and the image has been loaded.
I'll try the bootup later on tonight.

I really appreciate your help on this. :)

petehowell 09-07-2015 03:33 PM

Stratux goes up North
 
Quick lunch trip to Superior gave me a chance to try out the Gizmo. Pretty impressive..... some captioned pics in the link

The Gizmo and IFlyGPS.............


Traffic!


Good Reception - 6 Towers...........

Scrabo 09-07-2015 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by petehowell (Post 1012283)
Quick lunch trip to Superior gave me a chance to try out the Gizmo. Pretty impressive..... some captioned pics in the link

The Gizmo and IFlyGPS.............


Traffic!


Good Reception - 6 Towers...........


So you are the iFlyGPS user....:D. But serious surprised you have to extend the antenna that much to get good UAT data rates, mine is not extended at all and surprised me with the rates

ChiefPilot 09-07-2015 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scrabo (Post 1012285)
So you are the iFlyGPS user....:D. But serious surprised you have to extend the antenna that much to get good UAT data rates, mine is not extended at all and surprised me with the rates

I flew mine from South St. Paul MN to Hutchinson KS and back on Friday, and extending the antenna at all had negative consequences on the reception. My antenna is stuck to the side of the slider frame, antenna vertical.

I bought a dedicated 978MHz antenna, and as a quarter wave antenna it is quite a bit shorter than the collapsed "stock" antenna is. Will try that next, but the existing antenna was quite usable - always at least three towers visible on the trip I mentioned above, with usually five or six and as many as nine at times.

humptybump 09-07-2015 05:17 PM

Hi everyone,

I'm contributing to the Stratux project for the WebUI. I'd love your input on what you want in the web interface (and a brief detail of why). The VAF site is not the forum for that work. So ...

I'd like to have as many of you who wish, post over on the reddit subgroup for Stratux. I've already defined a few VAFers. Thanks! The developers and a broad range of users are active in that corner of the Internet.

If you have ideas, suggestions, or even issues, please share on the reddit subgroup.

Over the next 2-3 weeks, we hope for stability as well as some big additions. I (we) look forward to your input.

Thanks!

petehowell 09-07-2015 05:35 PM

978 antenna
 
I have some mcx connectors coming in the mail to allow me to make a properly sized antenna. I was surprised at the extension as well, but it was repeatable in the plane and on my back porch.

I was always able to meet or better the reception of my GDL39.

ChiefPilot 09-07-2015 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by petehowell (Post 1012324)
I have some mcx connectors coming in the mail to allow me to make a properly sized antenna. I was surprised at the extension as well, but it was repeatable in the plane and on my back porch.

I was always able to meet or better the reception of my GDL39.


Stuff like this is why I think RF engineers are akin to voodoo witchdoctors. Anything related to RF seems to me to be black magic of the darkest kind :)

humptybump 09-07-2015 06:09 PM

Funny you should mentions RF engineers. I have a dear friend who is a voodoo doer.

We talked at length about the antennas and I concluded that a half-wave was the way to go since we are "receive only" and there is no need for a ground plane on a receive-only antenna.

A half wave antenna for 978Mhz is close enough to 5-7/8" as we want it to be.

Those voodoo doers are a precious commodity.

fr0gpil0t 09-07-2015 06:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by humptybump (Post 1012315)
Hi everyone,

I'm contributing to the Stratux project for the WebUI. I'd love your input on what you want in the web interface (and a brief detail of why). The VAF site is not the forum for that work. So ...

I'd like to have as many of you who wish, post over on the reddit subgroup for Stratux. I've already defined a few VAFers. Thanks! The developers and a broad range of users are active in that corner of the Internet.

If you have ideas, suggestions, or even issues, please share on the reddit subgroup.

Over the next 2-3 weeks, we hope for stability as well as some big additions. I (we) look forward to your input.

Thanks!

As the project uses dump1090 - is it possible to turn the dump1090 web server on so when not in the plane using foreflight, I can use it to display traffic ?


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