dump978-fa

This is the FlightAware 978MHz UAT decoder.

It is a reimplementation in C++, loosely based on the demodulator from https://github.com/mutability/dump978.

For prebuilt Raspbian packages, see https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/install

Overview

dump978-fa is the main binary. It talks to the SDR, demodulates UAT data, and provides the data in a variety of ways - either as raw messages or as json-formatted decoded messages, and either on a network port or to stdout.

skyaware978 connects to a running dump978-fa and writes json files suitable for use by the SkyAware web map.

Building as a package

Caution: The package build is memory-hungry. A 1GB Pi will fail to build the package. Please build on a machine with more memory, or add swap.

$ sudo apt-get install \
  build-essential \
  debhelper \
  dh-systemd \
  libboost-system-dev \
  libboost-program-options-dev \
  libboost-regex-dev \
  libboost-filesystem-dev \
  libsoapysdr-dev

$ dpkg-buildpackage -b
$ sudo dpkg -i ../dump978-fa_*.deb ../skyaware978_*.deb

Building from source

1. Ensure SoapySDR and Boost are installed
2. 'make'

Installing the SoapySDR driver module

You will want at least one SoapySDR driver installed. For rtlsdr, try

$ sudo apt-get install soapysdr-module-rtlsdr

Configuration

For a package install, see /etc/default/dump978-fa and /etc/default/skyaware978.

The main options are:

• --sdr specifies the SDR to use, in the format expected by SoapySDR. For a rtlsdr, try --sdr driver=rtlsdr. To select a particular rtlsdr dongle by serial number, try --sdr driver=rtlsdr,serial=01234567
• --sdr-gain sets the SDR gain (default: max)
• --raw-port listens on the given TCP port and provides raw messages
• --json-port listens on the given TCP port and provides decoded messages in json format

Pass --help for a full list of options.

Third-party code

Third-party source code included in libs/:

• fec - from Phil Karn's fec-3.0.1 library (see fec/README)
• json.hpp - JSON for Modern C++ v3.5.0 - https://github.com/nlohmann/json