PiAware 3 Advanced Configuration

Please see "Optional Steps for Advanced Setup" for instructions on how to edit the configuration file.

All configuration settings

Receiver Types

RTL-SDR

This is the traditional setup with a RTL-SDR dongle directly connected to the Pi. PiAware will connect to localhost:30005 for ADS-B data. Set "receiver-type" to "rtlsdr" and (on SD card image installs only) configure the other rtlsdr-* values if needed.

SDR (UAT mode only)

This is the traditional setup with a RLT-SDR dongle directly connected to the Pi for 978 UAT. PiAware will connect to localhost:30978 for 978 UAT data. See 978 UAT Settings section below for instructions to configure PiAware for UAT mode.

Beast (SD card image installs only)

This configures PiAware to talk to a Mode S Beast connected by USB directly to the Pi. Set "receiver-type" to "beast". No further configuration is needed.

Radarcape (SD card image installs only)

This configures PiAware to talk to a separate Radarcape over the network. Set "receiver-type" to "radarcape" and "radarcape-host" to the hostname or IP address of the Radarcape.

External receiver - Relayed connection (SD card image installs only)

This configures PiAware to talk to an external receiver or other ADS-B source over the network. The receiver needs to provide data in the Beast binary format over TCP. Set "receiver-type" to "relay" and "receiver-host" / "receiver-port" to the host/port to connect to. PiAware will establish a single TCP connection to the receiver and internally relay data to the local map display, faup1090 and mlat-client as needed.

External receiver - Direct connection

This configures PiAware to talk to an external receiver or other ADS-B source over the network. The receiver needs to provide data in the Beast binary format over TCP. Set "receiver-type" to "other" and "receiver-host" / "receiver-port" to the host/port to connect to. PiAware will establish multiple TCP connections to the receiver. It will not forward data to the local map display or the standard ports. It does nothing extra beyond consuming the data from an existing source and forwarding it to FlightAware. This option requires more network bandwidth than the "relayed connection" mode and doesn't arrange for the local map to be fed, but it will work on package installs. It can also be used to connect to a receiver running locally on the Pi that's not covered by the other options.

978 UAT Setup

Note: 978 UAT aircraft tracking is only available in the U.S at this time. UAT coverage may be sparse and limted to certain areas.

978 UAT Software requirements:

• PiAware version 3.7.1 or later running on Raspbian Stretch OS

978 UAT Hardware requirements

• 978 UAT Antenna
• FlightAware Pro Stick (Orange model)

To enable UAT mode, set "uat-receiver-type" to "sdr" and "receiver-type" to "none". A reboot is required for receiver changes to take effect. Other piaware-config UAT options can be found in the table above.

Multilateration Settings

The "mlat-results-format" configuration setting controls how multilateration results are provided. It is a space-separated list, where each item is something that can be passed to the "--results" option of mlat-client:

• <protocol>,connect,host:port - makes an outgoing connection to host:port
• <protocol>,listen,port - listens for incoming connections on the given port

Supported protocols are:

• basestation: the "port 30003" BaseStation format
• ext_basestation: an extended version of the BaseStation format that includes mlat-specific data
• beast: results encoded as DF18 ADS-B messages, Beast binary format

The default settings set up three items:

• beast,connect,localhost:30104 - this feeds multilateration results back to the local dump1090 for display on the map
• beast,listen,30105 - this provides a Beast binary format feed of multilateration results that can be used by external systems, e.g., VRS
• ext_basestation,listen,30106 - like 30105, but in a different format

It should not be necessary to change the multilateration settings in most cases.