Displayed Signal Level

[tchawk]

I was playing around with my list layout and selected the signal level to see what that was looking like but it does not display in either the list or the aircraft detail panes. Is this just not a functional feature or is there somewhere that I need to activate it?

[Faramir]

From a quick search I read that the receiver (which are you using) needs to provide the signal level to VRS in order to display that level.
Please read about that here

[tchawk]

Oh, I had no idea that forum existed to refer to. Thank you. I swapped over to AVR or Beast mode and took VRS offline and then back online to see if that works. I have tar1090 going on my Raspberry Pi, but not don't know anything about Beast mode, it may or may not be a thing on it as well. I don't recall doing any setup of a Beast mode specifically.

[tchawk]

I just looked into it and I am using PiAware and it's default configuration is rtlsdr, but looks like beast is an option. Do you know if there is any downside (or any other benefit's for that matter) to going beast if I was to take my Pi offline to modify the SD card setting over to beast? Or am I opening up a can of hassle to just see the signal strength on VRS? I know if I open tar1090 for my adsb.fi feed I see RSSI there, so I know it is active somewhere somehow at least.

[Faramir]

My knowledge of VRS is virtually non-existent. Maybe Rik Gale will know as he's much more in to VRS... RSSI to me seems what is needed but how to configure that I don't know I'm sorry...

[tchawk]

No worries, I appreciate you pointing that out to me though. At least I have a direction to look now and a likely reason that the signal is not showing up. My knowledge of VRS is virtually non-existent as well. I also am not fluent in ADSB as I just used the basic walkthrough that Flight Aware gave for setting up PiAware on my Pi and feeding. I also stumbled upon an easy walkthrough on how to feed adsb.fi along with dump1090, so have that running as well but anything else, I am clueless on sadly. It's all about the learning.

[tchawk]

Got it reading signal strength as well as average signal strength. In options, both ADSB and MLAT receiver formats have to be changed from "BaseStation" to "AVR or Beast Raw Feed" and then the port needs to be changed from 30003 to 30005. Since it's a merged feed in my case, both ADSB and MLAT need to be changed, otherwise some aircraft will report signal strength and others won't.

[rikgale]

Just seen this thread and looks like you got it all working, by changing from SBS Basetation format to the Beast/AVR format. I turned that column on once, figured I had no idea what the numbers actually related too and disabled it again, it was taking up valuable screen space. If you have graphs1090 installed alongside your tar1090 then you probably don't need this. Graphs1090 will provide you with more muc meaningful data.

[tchawk]

Yeah, I had gotten busy since turning that on and hadn't had much of a chance to peruse the values, so I am not certain exactly what they mean either.

I do have graphs1090 open in another tab in my ADSB browser group and I check on it from time to time. Doesn't that encompass more of the receiver as a whole and not individual aircraft though? I was looking to see if I could see the individual aircraft signals in relation to the heat map and the surrounding terrain between myself and the far reaches of the heat map. I have two separate mountain ranges (Olympics to my West and Cascades to my East) along with Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens to my South East and wondering how the signal strength was being impacted by those features. It's more of a curiosity thing that I am not sure will work the way I am thinking it will..lol

[Anmer]

SBSPlotter should show how those mountains are impacting on your reception:

https://radarspotting.com/forum/index.php?action=tportal;sa=download;dl=item53

[tchawk]

Thanks Anmer. I have that up and running and it's doing it plotty goodness thing. The readme said to put it in my BaseStation folder, but the only BaseStation that I have is the .sqb file, so I'm running it standalone on my desktop and will just manually save plots from time to time. The auto-save function on an interval is not available for me to choose for some reason, but that's not a biggie though.

[Anmer]

The auto-save function on an interval is not available for me to choose for some reason, but that's not a biggie though.

What happens?

Do you see the dropdown list of options when you click on AutoSave?

You have to stop the plotting to enable the AutoSave "save" options.

[tchawk]

Thank you. Got that autosave going. You don't happen to know why I can't minimize it without it closing and me having to re-enter my coordinates again and start the plotting all over would you?

[Anmer]

It's an old app and I suspect it doesn't minimise. 

As per the Readme.txt:

== New subfolder for SBSplotter1 data files
A new subfolder "sbsplotter1" will be created below the Basestation folder. All
files that were stored in the Basestation folder and need to go to this folder
will be AUTOMATICALLY moved to the new folder on first program run.
The sbsplotter1.exe file remains in the Basestation folder!

In the sub-folder you should find a file - sbsplotter.ini.

Edit this with your IP address and coordinates.

[tchawk]

Just checked and no .ini file in there so far.

Could this be because I am running this standalone and not through BS? I never could get BS running. Maybe BS is the first run it is speaking of, and not the first run of SPSplotter.


Edit to add, that the .ini file finally decided to join the party. I was able to edit it with IP address, Lat and Lon and it now loads up with those.  Still aggravating to hit minimize and it closes the program. I'm so used to minimizing things and have it actually minimize instead of it closing out. Maybe all of those inadvertent close outs made that .ini show up..lol