Flightaware Pro Stick Plus/Raspberry Pi4 Help Needed

[DaveC]

Hi All

I have just purchased the Flightaware Pro Stick Plus and a Raspberry Pi4 after previously using Air Nav's micro Radarbox on my PC with VRS. I have managed to get Piaware installed and it is now feeding to Flightaware and VRS. My main reason for the swap was for the better performance of the dongle and the ability to keep the Pi running 24/7 instead of my PC. I was wanting to be able to use VRS so I could see what I was currently tracking on another device (laptop/mobile) and then to do a report at the end of the day to see what aircraft I have tracked especially all military flights. I also find VRS more user friendly and visually attractive than Skyaware especially with all the available silhouettes and profiles that have been created.

So I quickly worked out that although Flightaware's website will show me lots of stats on numbers of aircraft tracked/distances, it doesn't show me a log of the aircraft tracked (Unless I'm being blind and it does somewhere). And also that I would need VRS to be running 24/7 to do reports.

I have come to the conclusion that I will need to get VRS running on my Pi but with my very limited Pi knowledge I don't know where to start.

This is where I'm pleading for a bit of help in where to go next.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Dave

[Anmer]

it doesn't show me a log of the aircraft tracked (Unless I'm being blind and it does somewhere). And also that I would need VRS to be running 24/7 to do reports.

Correct, it doesn't.

But other apps can use the PiAware data on the various ports to update a BaseStation.sqb.  I think VRS can do that for you.

I don't use VRS so we need another member to help with this.

[Nigel]

Hi Dave

A few thoughts...

Have you seen this from the FA Forum:

https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/daily-log-e-mail-aircraft-report-directly-on-your-raspberrypi/25565

https://github.com/TomMuc1/Dump1090-Daily-Aircraft-Report

I have used it on my Pis and it saves a 24hr log daily on your Pi in Excel format which can then be transferred back to a PC. The downside for me is that it gives the Hex code but not the aircraft type or reg. I think this needs a link to a Basestation.sqb to gain this info and it makes reference to this in the info (one line sample database output using an inner join to basestation.sqb) but I have never been able to get it to work. I contacted the author and posted a message on the FA forum but didn't receive a reply.

Alternatively, there are several very good addons for Planeplotter which can be used to generate daily reports, however, these require the PC running Planeplotter for 24/7 which is something you are trying to avoid. I've run VRS on my PC but not on a Pi. I like the display it gives but it doesn't provide a hard copy of a daily report unless you do a lot of screen shots or copy/paste of the report display so I gave up on it.

Nigel

[rikgale]

Apologies for dragging up from the past, but I feel I should share this as I find it very useful and easy to use.

You can install VRS on your Pi with the reciever or another Pi on the network with this script. It automates install of Mono which is needed to run VRS on Linux, allows you to chose between install VRS 2.4.4 or 3.0.0 and you can set up at least one receiver during the install.

https://github.com/mypiaware/virtual-radar-server-installation