Flightaware Prostick Basestation help

[ashton152000]

Hello

Thanks for all the help with choosing a puck replacement.

I now have a Flghtaware prostick, and I am using RTL1090 for receiving the data.

I want to direct the data to Basestation and I have downloaded Modesmixer2 for this, but to be honest I have no idea on how to create a bat file that will take the input from RTL1090 and direct it to Basestation.

Would anyone have an example and how do you create your own bat file and where do you save it?

Any help greatly received.

Ian

[Triple7]

Here's a linlk to some notes I wrote a couple of years ago.

https://radarspotting.com/forum/index.php/topic,2978.msg24197.html#msg24197

You mightl need to modify the --inconnect bit to suit your setup - a bit of trial and error may be necessary, but in principle, it should work perfectly when setup correctly. The example in the link above uses ModeSDeco2 to do the decoding and as you are using RTL1090, there may need to be a change to the port No. for RTL1090.

Tim

[ashton152000]

All

I have managed to create a bat file and i am now populating basestation with the data.

Can anyone advise if its possible to add RTL1090 and the modesmixer2 bat file into the windows start up? Or do i just need to run them each time?

Also do i need to keep the c: prompt open for the data to transfer?

Any help much appreciated

Ian

[ashton152000]

Thanks Tim, i will check your notes against what i have come up with.

Ian

[IanH]

Ah well - I was testing Tim's batch file for use with RTL 1090 and came up with:

cmd /c  modesmixer2.exe --inConnect 127.0.0.1:31001 --outServer sbs10001:10001 --filter-nocountry
PAUSE
exit

Just the change of port to 31001 shown in red.

But if you've got it working, then you must have discovered this. 

And yes it should be possible to start both in a batch file at startup - let me check.

[Triple7]

Here's one way of doing it:

Code Select Expand

start /d "D:\Program Files\ModeSDeco2\" MD2.bat
timeout /t 10
start /d "D:\Program Files\BaseStation\" basestation.exe


Saved as a .bat file and copied into the Windows startup folder. Obviously make the necessary modifications to suit your requirements. The MD2.bat files contains the lines to start that, which you can replace with the equivalent for RTL1090. It would be good if you could share your final versions of both for future reference.

Tim

[IanH]

Tim answered before me but I'll post what I wrote anyway - some is specific to RTL1090. I have also explained that you need to specify where the programs are located.

Go with Tim's code using "start /d" at the start of each line - the subtleties of start vs cmd are not important here.

When RTL1090 starts it needs a click on the START button to work. To avoid this, click on the OPEN button and anothe window opens. There is a "switch" labelled Config - click on the left hand side of that box and a menu appears. Check the 1st option at the top on the right: "/run -start after launch". Click the "Save+close" button at the bottom.

Once that is done this seems to work as as single batch file with a new line added to start RTL1090. BUT note the "pathto" I have added in front of each command - you need to tell the batch file where to find the programs.

Code Select Expand


start \pathto\RTL1090.exe
cmd /c  \pathto\modesmixer2.exe --inConnect 127.0.0.1:31001 --outServer sbs10001:10001 --filter-nocountry
PAUSE
exit
For example if you have RTL1090 in a directory called C:\radar\RTL090  and modeSmixer2 in a directory called C:\radar\mSm2, the batch file becomes:

Code Select Expand


start C:\radar\RTL090\RTL1090.exe
cmd /c  C:\radar\mSm2\modesmixer2.exe --inConnect 127.0.0.1:31001 --outServer sbs10001:10001 --filter-nocountry
PAUSE
exit

[ashton152000]

Tim / Ian

Thanks for all of your help with this, I now have a start up bat fie that opens RTL1090, Basestation and runs the Modesmixer2.bat file.

The code is as follows:

start C:\Users\ashton152000\Desktop\RTL1090\RTL1090.exe
start C:\Tools\Kinetic\BaseStation\BaseStation.exe
cmd /c  C:\Users\ashton152000\Downloads\Modesmixer2\modesmixer2.bat
PAUSE
exit

So I am getting aircraft plotting on basestation but i'm not sure if i'm seeing everything...this may be down to the poor antenna i'm using (waiting for a new one), as RTL1090 seems to show a lot more messages...but I will see what happens once the new one is delivered.
Thanks again

Ian

[IanH]

RTl1090 us showing everything it receives but some of these are not transmitting their location and hence will not show on BaseStation. Typically older ERJ, GA aircraft

This is one of the "problems" that multilateration (MLAT) attempts to solve. Multiple receivers (me, Tim, and many others) send their data to a central server which then calculates where these aircraft are and sends it back to us.

Planeplotter and Piaware are two of these. In addition FlightRadar24, Planefinder and others combine lots of individual data and present it on their websites. Problem with many of these is that they censor what they show (US bizjets typically that don't want their locations known).

I'm running a PC that sends its data to PlanePlotter but that costs a one-off fee - the compensation is no censorship, coverage beyond you own receiver but slower updates on position, I also have a Pi running Piawhere which sends data to Flightaware and sends me back multileration data for the area I contribute to. Its free and the update rate is good for me but there is some censorship although this appears as unidentified aircraft rather than missing plot.

Ironically in an area of good coverage, the sending back of data can be slow since they are sending it back to each receiver in turn. I have recently lost an MLAT aircraft for around 40 miles which did not make me happy. The popularity of Piaware for MLAT could turn in on itself because of this. I turned off other receivers that might have been contibuting to this problem. Flightaware possibly lose data - TOUGH!

Anyway that's my views and comments.

[ashton152000]

Ian

Thanks for your thoughts, i might consider giving planeplotter ago.

One question, do you need to be online for planeplotter to work? As my ultimate goal is to have a mobile solution that may or may not have access to the net.

Ian

[Anmer]

RTl1090 us showing everything it receives but some of these are not transmitting their location and hence will not show on BaseStation. Typically older ERJ, GA aircraft

Non-positional, Mode-S aircraft should show on BaseStation.  They should appear in the right-hand aircraft list when "Show All" is selected.  But they will not appear on the map as they do not transmit positional data.

I'm running a PC that sends its data to PlanePlotter but that costs a one-off fee - the compensation is no censorship

Not entirely true.  COAA has admitted that it too "hides" data for some aircraft.

Ironically in an area of good coverage, the sending back of data can be slow since they are sending it back to each receiver in turn

This is a new one for me.  I'm not aware of any "bandwidth" bottleneck.  I'll check with FlightAware.

[Triple7]

Ian,

PlanePlotter (PP) will work in an off-line mode but it will only display the aircraft received by your own receiver and won't (obviously) display any Mlat frames. To work at its best, it really does need an internet connection. I use it mobile quite happily with my laptop tethered to my mobile phone, but since that's a company phone, I am not too bothered about the amount of bandwidth it uses - which is not excessive anyway.

I also run the FA Pro Stick / RPi combination and feed the return Mlats into ModeSMixer2 and filter the plots, so that screen only shows Mlat data. Therefore I have BaseStation showing ADSB plots and MM2 showing Mlats - makes each screen less cluttered and covers all I need from where I sit. I also think the accuracy of the FA Mlats is better than PP and since I have been using PP for 9 years now, that is not a criticism, just an observation.

Tim

[IanH]

Ironically in an area of good coverage, the sending back of data can be slow since they are sending it back to each receiver in turn

This is a new one for me.  I'm not aware of any "bandwidth" bottleneck.  I'll check with FlightAware.

There's a response in the PiAware forum from "obj"  that mentioned this is an answer to "disappearing" plots.
Found it: https://discussions.flightaware.com/t/missing-mlat-track-pieces/26285
I noted this because I was having the same problem. Seems like they return data when they accept it from you. In an area with a high density of receivers they rotate around who they get data from and hence you don't get anything back until they accept your data again. There is a "grace period" and "obj" was going to tweak some settings to improve things.