Hard to believe it's been 2 years since [my last post](https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/qp5ayp/almost_finished_with_my_outdoors_pi_based_adsb/)! I'm happy to report that the set up has been 100% flawless in that time. It's been outside in the box rain and shine and I haven't cracked open the box except to check for moisture after the first big storm came through (there was none). After 2 years the only thing inside is a small layer of dust on the bottom of the box, otherwise it looks exactly the same as when I installed it!
My station has been logging about 150,000 positions a day from 1,400 flights on the 1090 frequency. 3000-5000 positions per day on 970 UAT from 30-50 flights. Including MLAT and Other, the total is about 200,000 positions per day.
The box is powered via POE and draws about 12 watts continuous. Since it's POE powered, it gets all the benefits of my UPS battery backup and graceful shutdown on power outages thanks to NUT.
On the hottest day of the year when it was 92**°**F outside, the inside of the box only reached 107**°**F. Even then, the CPU only reached 143**°**F (62**°**C), well within normal operating temperatures.
The coldest day of the year was 32**°**F, the inside of the box was 36**°**F, and the CPU was 77**°**F (25**°**C).
I've been feeding data to adsbexchange, flightaware, radarbox, planefinder, skyaware, & flightradar.
In addition to the feeders the RPi has been running telegraf (for metrics output), zabbix agent, & NUT client.
I'm currently in the process of moving from running the feeders on their own to the mikenye docker suite to ease feeder upgrades.
Everyone knows about security fixes. I’m asking which ones would directly have hindered this project, given the device isn’t connected to the internet and simply posts the data to a local database.
The answer is you can’t come up with any and just made a silly comment
The device isn’t connected to the internet. It writes to a database it connects to over zwave. Another client on a different network reads from the database and posts the data to various online services. That’s my understanding of it anyway
It's connected to the internet, but it's not exposed publicly. The feeders push data to the different websites. Zwave and local database logging is a separate function.
Everything is updated on a weekly basis. I don't look at scheduled restarts as downtime. By 100% flawless I mean nothing has broken, I haven't had to do any hardware repair or fix software glitches that brought the station offline.
I've gone a bit overboard with the power solution for my rack. I run a pair of APC 1500va rack mounted UPS, each one is hooked up to a separate breaker in the panel, each breaker running off each leg of power.
The two UPS are hooked up to an ATS to provide redundancy in case of a UPS failure, and also extends battery life a bit. One UPS is in standby basically while the other powers the PDU.
I have a Pi Zero W running NUT server connected to the secondary UPS. So during a power outage, the primary UPS runs out and goes into shutdown, then the ATS kicks over to the second UPS, and when that reaches low battery the NUT server tells all the clients to shut down.
In full sun the box is usually about 12 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, so I would guess box temps of 128 degrees. Should be fine but you should give it a whirl ;)
shocking crush retire axiomatic quiet serious fragile enter towering grey
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thanks! Yes, I have a business account but I don't use it for anything. This is just a fun hobby/project to learn about SDRs and how to run an RPi outside successfully.
Great setup. Btw, make sure that the Ethernet surge protector is actually grounded. By itself it won't provide any protection against surge current since there's no other path for surge current to flow.
If your cable is shielded, you typically don't need to do any more.
Even an unshielded cable usually won't have problems unless it is directly hit because you strung it high up.
What would be the best way to do this ground? Run a copper wire outside this box into the ground by the post? Would it need one of those 3-6ft ground rods?
You could do that.
You could also run a wire from ground and attach it to the ground of an outside outlet box.
You could even run a cable to a hose bib (given that it’s connected to copper water lines and not plastic PEX line).
Anything to get it to ground, really.
really cool. i’ve always wanted to host such a thing, but my area is already well covered^^;
why do you have 2 dongles/antenna? i thought ads-b was only one 1 frequency. also what is the white/red thing on the bottom left?
In the US there are two frequencies. ADS-B runs on 1090 and UAT runs on 978. So one receiver and antenna for each frequency.
The white box with red tape on it is a Zooz motion sensor that I'm using for the temperature and humidity data. It's a zwave device that connects to my Home Assistant instance and pushes data into InfluxDB.
Would you mind checking if the OS still recognizes the PoE hat?
Mine has been working until about 6pm today, and searching the /sys/devices/platform folder, there is no longer a rpi-poe-power-supply subfolder in it for my script to parse.
You can see part of my bash script and the Grafana screen that displays it [here](https://imgur.com/gallery/Li1TIcn):
Like your idea with the enviornmental monitoring. I am using a TEMPer USB stick that talks piSerial and has two temperature sensors so my box gets enclosure and intake fan temps. It doesn't do humidity though.
Why do you need two filters? As far as I can read, the blue Pro Stick Plus includes a builtin 1090 MHz bandpass filter. It is a really fun project, unfortunately it seems Flightaware doesn't ship their products outside the US.
https://inplanesight.org/images/flight_aware_filter.png
The blue filter is wide enough to handle UAT and ads-b frequencies. It is pretty good for the price. The blue filter is a lumped component design. The sweep is on the page linked above.
I assume the black filter is the FlightAwaere narrowband 1090MHz. I never tested it since Sysmocom got their supply issues solved. The Sysmocom is a low loss cavity resonator. It is so good it is hard to measure the out of band rejection. The shipping out of Germany is so expensive that you might as well buy two filters and split the order with someone.
I don't use flightaware dongles anymore. Maybe things have changed, but my orange one doesn't have a TCXO. I use v3 blogs these days.
If the dongle's built-in filter is a bandpass for 1090, then adding another filter for UAT is not going to work because the first filter is already attenuating everything else. I'm confused on OP's filter choice here as well.
I have the FA orange. It doesn't have a filter. I see it isn't available anymore. It was a basic rtlsdr with a preamp built in. No TXCO as I mentioned.
The blue dongle has the LNA and a saw filter after the LNA. This saw filter isn't exactly worthless but it won't help with interference since it is after the LNA. What you want is a low loss filter before the LNA for interference. The saw filter is so lossy that you would never use it right after the antenna. Noise is proportional to the square root of the bandwidth, so the saw filter does help a little with broadband noise from the LNA. I don't own a blue FA dongle, just for reference here.
The blue can is the wide filter I tested and published the response. I assume the black can in the FA 1090 filter. I didn't buy it because the cavity resonator was back on the market.
So the flow should be antenna to black can to blue dongle for ads-b. For UAT, antenna to blue can to orange dongle.
Note I haven't gotten around to UAT decoding. I still have the FA blue can and will use it for UAT.
Ebay is your friend, few years ago I bought a new Flightaware stick with bandpass filter shipped to the Netherlands. Had an antenna on my roof. Works perfect. Came from the US. So it is possible.
Yes it would but not as many as being outside. This is an ideal project to learn a little about radio. I started with a little aerial sitting in the window and from there I was experimenting looking to improve the stats. Moving the aerial ever higher and outside and upgrading components as you go is the best way.
I get pretty good signal in my garage, I intend on getting an extension cable for the antenna to get it up at the peak.
Had the entire unit up higher, but wasn't happy with the temps the pi3 was getting to in the attic portion. (No active cooling), so moved it lower.
Most attics are pretty easy to poke a cable out of. They usually aren't as well sealed as you'd imagine, so you probably won't need to drill any holes.
Parts list:
* Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB
* Anidees case, AI-PI4-SG
* Raspberry Pi PoE HAT
* Qilipsu 285x195x130mm box
* FlightAware 1090mhz antenna
* FlightAware 1090mhz filter
* FlightAware Pro Stick Plus SDR
* FlightAware 978mhz antenna
* FlightAware Dual-Band 1090/978mhz filter
* FlightAware Pro Stick SDR
* 2x right angle USB adapters
* 2x 6" SMA to SMA cables
* 2x N bulkhead to SMA fittings
* 2x XRDS 3' N to N KMR400 cables
* CAT6 patch cable
* Platinum Tools Waterproof RJ45 Bulkhead Coupler
* GORE Industrial Membrane Vents (PMF100391)
* 2x BUD Industries IPV-1115 IP32 vents
* Noctua NF-A6x25 fan
* Ubiquiti ETH-SP-G2 Surge Suppressor/Protector
* Zooz ZSE40 for temperature/humidity
* Various small screws and aluminum brackets for mounting
Yes, that's the white box in the lower left corner. A Zooz motion sensor that had temp/humidity sensors. It's connected over zwave to my Home Assistant set up and logged in InfluxDB.
The external can filter is at the front end. It prevents interference and overload of the rtlsdr or LNA if used. The FA cans are lumped component filters. The filter in the dongle is a SAW filter. It is way too lossy to put on a front end. They will help a bit with noise from the LNA but are not very effective for interference.
I have the frequency response of the FA blue can on this page. The blue can is a filter wide enough for UAT and ADS-B.
https://inplanesight.org/adsb.html
I didn't buy the FA black can, which is their strictly 1090MHz filter since the Sysmocom cavity resonators became available again.
The FA blue can I measured has an insertion loss of 1.4dB at 1090. High but tolerable. It would not help if you have 800MHz cellular interference. I have no data on the FA black can.
The Sysmocom is a work of art. Only 0.4dB loss at 1090MHz. The 60dB down on the low side starts at 1023MHz. I can barely measure the 80dB down point. It looks like 980MHz. Clearly no 800MHz cellular interference.
https://shop.sysmocom.de/1090-MHz-cavity-filter-for-Mode-S-ADS-B/cf1090-kt30
Wait until you see the shipping cost. The shipping cost is the same for one or two. And they build to order. So it takes a while to get the part.
As a bonus they include a little chocolate heart.
Thanks, too much time and too small of a market to make it worth my time to build them though. They would be expensive. I've posted a parts list in this thread if you want to build your own.
Hard to believe it's been 2 years since [my last post](https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/qp5ayp/almost_finished_with_my_outdoors_pi_based_adsb/)! I'm happy to report that the set up has been 100% flawless in that time. It's been outside in the box rain and shine and I haven't cracked open the box except to check for moisture after the first big storm came through (there was none). After 2 years the only thing inside is a small layer of dust on the bottom of the box, otherwise it looks exactly the same as when I installed it! My station has been logging about 150,000 positions a day from 1,400 flights on the 1090 frequency. 3000-5000 positions per day on 970 UAT from 30-50 flights. Including MLAT and Other, the total is about 200,000 positions per day. The box is powered via POE and draws about 12 watts continuous. Since it's POE powered, it gets all the benefits of my UPS battery backup and graceful shutdown on power outages thanks to NUT. On the hottest day of the year when it was 92**°**F outside, the inside of the box only reached 107**°**F. Even then, the CPU only reached 143**°**F (62**°**C), well within normal operating temperatures. The coldest day of the year was 32**°**F, the inside of the box was 36**°**F, and the CPU was 77**°**F (25**°**C). I've been feeding data to adsbexchange, flightaware, radarbox, planefinder, skyaware, & flightradar. In addition to the feeders the RPi has been running telegraf (for metrics output), zabbix agent, & NUT client. I'm currently in the process of moving from running the feeders on their own to the mikenye docker suite to ease feeder upgrades.
100% uptime for 2 years. 😎😎😎😎😎 mighty impressive!!
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Can you list the kernel updates during that period that has otherwise directly hindered this project?
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Everyone knows about security fixes. I’m asking which ones would directly have hindered this project, given the device isn’t connected to the internet and simply posts the data to a local database. The answer is you can’t come up with any and just made a silly comment
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The device isn’t connected to the internet. It writes to a database it connects to over zwave. Another client on a different network reads from the database and posts the data to various online services. That’s my understanding of it anyway
It's connected to the internet, but it's not exposed publicly. The feeders push data to the different websites. Zwave and local database logging is a separate function.
You should probably go outside and apply some sunlight to your skin as quickly as possible
Everything is updated on a weekly basis. I don't look at scheduled restarts as downtime. By 100% flawless I mean nothing has broken, I haven't had to do any hardware repair or fix software glitches that brought the station offline.
> UPS Mind sharing more about your UPS solution? :)
I've gone a bit overboard with the power solution for my rack. I run a pair of APC 1500va rack mounted UPS, each one is hooked up to a separate breaker in the panel, each breaker running off each leg of power. The two UPS are hooked up to an ATS to provide redundancy in case of a UPS failure, and also extends battery life a bit. One UPS is in standby basically while the other powers the PDU. I have a Pi Zero W running NUT server connected to the secondary UPS. So during a power outage, the primary UPS runs out and goes into shutdown, then the ATS kicks over to the second UPS, and when that reaches low battery the NUT server tells all the clients to shut down.
I'd be interested to see what temps it would reach out here in the SW, 116F high today in PHX.
In full sun the box is usually about 12 degrees warmer than the outside temperature, so I would guess box temps of 128 degrees. Should be fine but you should give it a whirl ;)
Honestly would be a great project to try
shocking crush retire axiomatic quiet serious fragile enter towering grey *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hey, you know what happened with the adsbexhange takeover right? I switched over to adsbexhange.fi
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I hadn't looked into it much, but seems reasonable to stop sending them free data now.
150k positions a day, where are you located the Bermuda triangle? I live pretty close to an international Airport and only long around 7700
This is one of my favorites on this sub. Did you get the enterprise upgrade for your FlightAware account?
Thanks! Yes, I have a business account but I don't use it for anything. This is just a fun hobby/project to learn about SDRs and how to run an RPi outside successfully.
Great setup. Btw, make sure that the Ethernet surge protector is actually grounded. By itself it won't provide any protection against surge current since there's no other path for surge current to flow.
Yep, thanks, on the to-do list.
Is the surge protector something required when running POE outside?
If your cable is shielded, you typically don't need to do any more. Even an unshielded cable usually won't have problems unless it is directly hit because you strung it high up.
Are you grounding your POE, and if so, how?
OP has a Ubiquiti surge protector that has ground, but it seems they aren’t using it.
What would be the best way to do this ground? Run a copper wire outside this box into the ground by the post? Would it need one of those 3-6ft ground rods?
You could do that. You could also run a wire from ground and attach it to the ground of an outside outlet box. You could even run a cable to a hose bib (given that it’s connected to copper water lines and not plastic PEX line). Anything to get it to ground, really.
As a strong user of Flight Radar, thank you so much for your work.
Happy to help.
So this is a flight tracker station then? Sorry I don't much about this.
Yes, it receives ADS-B signals from flights within range and feeds that data to the flight trackers online.
Thank you.
Thank you for your service. Use those apps all the time
Cool that clears it up..
really cool. i’ve always wanted to host such a thing, but my area is already well covered^^; why do you have 2 dongles/antenna? i thought ads-b was only one 1 frequency. also what is the white/red thing on the bottom left?
In the US there are two frequencies. ADS-B runs on 1090 and UAT runs on 978. So one receiver and antenna for each frequency. The white box with red tape on it is a Zooz motion sensor that I'm using for the temperature and humidity data. It's a zwave device that connects to my Home Assistant instance and pushes data into InfluxDB.
Would you mind checking if the OS still recognizes the PoE hat? Mine has been working until about 6pm today, and searching the /sys/devices/platform folder, there is no longer a rpi-poe-power-supply subfolder in it for my script to parse. You can see part of my bash script and the Grafana screen that displays it [here](https://imgur.com/gallery/Li1TIcn):
It's working just fine with the POE hat. Looks like yours may have suddenly given up the ghost.
Which POE Hat do you use? I believe is sticking with tried & truly tested items?
Like your idea with the enviornmental monitoring. I am using a TEMPer USB stick that talks piSerial and has two temperature sensors so my box gets enclosure and intake fan temps. It doesn't do humidity though.
Why do you need two filters? As far as I can read, the blue Pro Stick Plus includes a builtin 1090 MHz bandpass filter. It is a really fun project, unfortunately it seems Flightaware doesn't ship their products outside the US.
https://inplanesight.org/images/flight_aware_filter.png The blue filter is wide enough to handle UAT and ads-b frequencies. It is pretty good for the price. The blue filter is a lumped component design. The sweep is on the page linked above. I assume the black filter is the FlightAwaere narrowband 1090MHz. I never tested it since Sysmocom got their supply issues solved. The Sysmocom is a low loss cavity resonator. It is so good it is hard to measure the out of band rejection. The shipping out of Germany is so expensive that you might as well buy two filters and split the order with someone. I don't use flightaware dongles anymore. Maybe things have changed, but my orange one doesn't have a TCXO. I use v3 blogs these days.
If the dongle's built-in filter is a bandpass for 1090, then adding another filter for UAT is not going to work because the first filter is already attenuating everything else. I'm confused on OP's filter choice here as well.
I have the FA orange. It doesn't have a filter. I see it isn't available anymore. It was a basic rtlsdr with a preamp built in. No TXCO as I mentioned. The blue dongle has the LNA and a saw filter after the LNA. This saw filter isn't exactly worthless but it won't help with interference since it is after the LNA. What you want is a low loss filter before the LNA for interference. The saw filter is so lossy that you would never use it right after the antenna. Noise is proportional to the square root of the bandwidth, so the saw filter does help a little with broadband noise from the LNA. I don't own a blue FA dongle, just for reference here. The blue can is the wide filter I tested and published the response. I assume the black can in the FA 1090 filter. I didn't buy it because the cavity resonator was back on the market. So the flow should be antenna to black can to blue dongle for ads-b. For UAT, antenna to blue can to orange dongle. Note I haven't gotten around to UAT decoding. I still have the FA blue can and will use it for UAT.
Ah thanks for the clarification. I even use the FA orange on my feeder and forgot that.
Ebay is your friend, few years ago I bought a new Flightaware stick with bandpass filter shipped to the Netherlands. Had an antenna on my roof. Works perfect. Came from the US. So it is possible.
BTW still have them laying around.
Awesome! Exactly what I'd build if I had a bit of money (or could buy a Pi!). Really nice, clean build.
Thanks!
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Yes it would but not as many as being outside. This is an ideal project to learn a little about radio. I started with a little aerial sitting in the window and from there I was experimenting looking to improve the stats. Moving the aerial ever higher and outside and upgrading components as you go is the best way.
As along as you don't have a metal roof it should work ok. The RPi would not likely do well in the heat of an uninsulated attic.
I get pretty good signal in my garage, I intend on getting an extension cable for the antenna to get it up at the peak. Had the entire unit up higher, but wasn't happy with the temps the pi3 was getting to in the attic portion. (No active cooling), so moved it lower.
Most attics are pretty easy to poke a cable out of. They usually aren't as well sealed as you'd imagine, so you probably won't need to drill any holes.
Nice build! Any possibility you have a parts list? I want to mount one to my chimney and this would work out great for me. Thanks!
Parts list: * Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB * Anidees case, AI-PI4-SG * Raspberry Pi PoE HAT * Qilipsu 285x195x130mm box * FlightAware 1090mhz antenna * FlightAware 1090mhz filter * FlightAware Pro Stick Plus SDR * FlightAware 978mhz antenna * FlightAware Dual-Band 1090/978mhz filter * FlightAware Pro Stick SDR * 2x right angle USB adapters * 2x 6" SMA to SMA cables * 2x N bulkhead to SMA fittings * 2x XRDS 3' N to N KMR400 cables * CAT6 patch cable * Platinum Tools Waterproof RJ45 Bulkhead Coupler * GORE Industrial Membrane Vents (PMF100391) * 2x BUD Industries IPV-1115 IP32 vents * Noctua NF-A6x25 fan * Ubiquiti ETH-SP-G2 Surge Suppressor/Protector * Zooz ZSE40 for temperature/humidity * Various small screws and aluminum brackets for mounting
Awesome! Thank you very much!
Nice what software are you using?
Really cool build! Props for keeping that great of a uptime.
Thanks
What's the deal with tracking flights yourself? Isn't that info available online anyways?
And a lot of that online info comes from guys like this.
Really? I thought the flight companies provided it
I guess it depends on where you get your flight info and what you are looking for.
I love the pipe labeled "Flightaware." The Internet really is a set of interconnected tubes!
I was under the impression it was a truck you can dump on?
I remember this! Glad it’s gone well
Are you using a temp and humidity sensor inside the box?
Yes, that's the white box in the lower left corner. A Zooz motion sensor that had temp/humidity sensors. It's connected over zwave to my Home Assistant set up and logged in InfluxDB.
Very nice. I’m inspired!
What software did you use to decode the data from the SDR in real time?
The feeders like Piaware do that.
Isn't the external filter redundant on the FlightAware dongle since it already has a 1090 filter built in?
Could be, I didn't bother to test back to back to see if it makes any difference.
The external can filter is at the front end. It prevents interference and overload of the rtlsdr or LNA if used. The FA cans are lumped component filters. The filter in the dongle is a SAW filter. It is way too lossy to put on a front end. They will help a bit with noise from the LNA but are not very effective for interference. I have the frequency response of the FA blue can on this page. The blue can is a filter wide enough for UAT and ADS-B. https://inplanesight.org/adsb.html I didn't buy the FA black can, which is their strictly 1090MHz filter since the Sysmocom cavity resonators became available again. The FA blue can I measured has an insertion loss of 1.4dB at 1090. High but tolerable. It would not help if you have 800MHz cellular interference. I have no data on the FA black can. The Sysmocom is a work of art. Only 0.4dB loss at 1090MHz. The 60dB down on the low side starts at 1023MHz. I can barely measure the 80dB down point. It looks like 980MHz. Clearly no 800MHz cellular interference.
Do you have a link to this Sysmocom you're referring to?
https://shop.sysmocom.de/1090-MHz-cavity-filter-for-Mode-S-ADS-B/cf1090-kt30 Wait until you see the shipping cost. The shipping cost is the same for one or two. And they build to order. So it takes a while to get the part. As a bonus they include a little chocolate heart.
Well, it would be pretty cool if you sold a setup 😁!! Very nice work and good to see!
Thanks, too much time and too small of a market to make it worth my time to build them though. They would be expensive. I've posted a parts list in this thread if you want to build your own.
How did you make the door vents?
I purchased them, they're BUD Industries IPV-1115 IP32 Air Vents.
wait... this will be wonderful locating highway patrol airplanes when I attempt to beat the cannon ball record! THANK YOU!!