viz1090

This is work in progress There are a lot of missing pieces in this implementation so far:

• A proper map system yet. Eventually map data should be pulled from Mapbox or similar.
• In-application menus or configuration yet.
• Theming/colormaps (important as this is primarily intended to be eye candy!)
• Integration with handheld features like GPS, battery monitors, buttons/dials, etc.
• Android build is currently broken

BUILDING

Tested and working on Ubuntu 18.04, Raspbian Stretch / Buster, Windows Subsystem for Linux (with Ubuntu 18.04), and Mac

0. Install build essentials

sudo apt-get install build-essential

1. Install SDL and RTL-SDR libararies

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libsdl2-gfx-dev librtlsdr-dev

Note: On Raspbian the SDL2 package requires X to be running. See the Raspberry Pi section for notes on running from the terminal and other improvements.

2. Download and build spidr

cd ~
git clone https://www.github.com/nmatsuda/spidr
cd spidr
make clean; make

3. Download and process map data Until more comprehensive map source (e.g., Mapbox) is integrated, viz1090 uses the lat/lon SVG files from https://www.mccurley.org

The getmap.sh pulls the large SVG file for the contiguous 48 US states and produces a binary file for viz1090 to read.

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip
pip3 install lxml numpy tqdm
./getmap.sh

There is also a world map avaiable from McCurley (https://mccurley.org/svg/data/World.svgz), which is much lower resolution and thus better for lower power hardware.

The mapconverter script called by getmap.sh downsamples the file to render resonably quickly on a Raspberri Pi 4. If you are on a slower device (e.g, a Raspberry Pi 3), you may want to try something like:

python3 mapconverter.py --resolution 64 all.svg

On the other hand, if you are on a modern desktop or laptop, you can use something higher (but you probably don't need the full 6 digit precision of the McCurley SVG file):

python3 mapconverter.py --resolution 8192 all.svg

3. (Windows only)

As WSL does not have an X server built in, you will need to install a 3rd party X server, such as https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/

* run Xlaunch from the start menu
* Uncheck "Use Native openGL"
* Open the Ubuntu WSL terminal
* Specify the X display to use
```
export DISPLAY=:0
```
* Start viz1090 as described below.

RUNNING

1. Start dump1090 (http://www.github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090) locally in network mode:

dump1090 --net

2. Run viz1090

./viz1090 --fullsceen --lat [your latitude] --lon [your longitude]

viz1090 will open an SDL window set to the resolution of your screen.

RUNTIME OPTIONS

Argument	Description
--server [domain name or ip]	Specify a dump1090 server
--port [port number]	Specify dump1090 server port
--metric	Display metric units
--lat	Specify your latitude in degrees
--lon	Specify your longitiude in degrees
--screensize [width] [height]	Specify a resolution, otherwise use resolution of display
--uiscale [scale]	Scale up UI elements by integer amounts for high resolution screen
--fullscreen	Render fullscreen rather than in a window

HARDWARE NOTES

This software was originally intended for Raspberry Pi devices, and it is currently optimized for the Raspberry Pi 4 with the following configuration:

• Raspberry Pi 4
• A display:
  • Pimoroni HyperPixel 4.0 Display *best overall, but requires some rework to use battery monitoring features of the PiJuice mentioned below
  • Waveshare 5.5" AMOLED *this is very good screen but the Google Pixel 2 phone mentioned below has a very similar display for the same price (along with everything else you need in a nice package)
  • Waveshare 4.3" HDMI(B)
  • Adafruit 2.8" Capacitive Touch
• A battery hat, such as:
  • PiJuice Battery Hat *I2C pins must be reworked to connect to the Hyperpixel nonstandard I2C breakout pins, unfortunately
  • MakerFocus UPS Hat
• Any USB SDR receiver:
  • Noelec Nano V3
  • Stratux V2 *very low power but hard to find

If running as a front end only, with a separate dump1090 server, the best option is to use an Android phone, such as the Pixel 2, which significantly outperforms a Raspberry Pi 4.

viz1090 has been tested on other boards such as the UP Core and UP Squared, but these boards have poor performance compared to a Raspberry Pi 4, along with worse software and peripheral support, so they are not recommended. viz1090 with a low resolution map will run on these boards or even a Raspberry Pi Zero, so these remain options with some tradeoffs.

Of course, a variety of other devices work well for this purpose - all of the development so far has been done on a touchscreen Dell XPS laptop.

Credits

viz1090 is largely based on dump1090 (Malcom Robb, Salvatore Sanfilippo)