Feeding PlaneFinder

If you wish to feed PlaneFinder, follow the steps below.

PlaneFinder provides live flight tracking data to industries around the world with customised products for aviation, business intelligence and emerging markets alongside world class apps.

The docker image ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefinder contains PlaneFinder's pfclient feeder software and all of its required prerequisites and libraries. This needs to run in conjunction with ultrafeeder (or another Beast provider).

Getting a Share Code

Already running pfclient

You'll need your share code from your existing feeder.

To get your share code, log into your planefinder.net account, and go to "Your Receivers". Your share code will be listed next to your existing receiver.

You will need to make sure your existing receiver is shutdown prior to continuing.

New to pfclient

If you're already running pfclient and you've followed the steps in the previous command, you can skip this section.

You'll need a share code. In order to obtain a PlaneFinder Share Code, we will start a temporary container running pfclient, which will run through a configuration wizard and generate a share code.

Run the command:

docker run \
    --rm \
    -it \
    --name pfclient_temp \
    --entrypoint pfclient \
    -p 30053:30053 \
    ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefinder

Once the container has started, you should see a message such as:

2020-04-11 06:45:25.823307 [-] We were unable to locate a configuration file and have entered configuration mode by default. Please visit: http://172.22.7.12:30053 to complete configuration.

At this point, open a web browser and go to http://docker.host.ip.addr:30053 You won't be able to use the URL given in the log output, as the IP address in the log output will show the private, internal IP of the docker container.

In your browser, follow the steps in the configuration wizard. When finished, you'll be given a PlaneFinder Share Code. Save this in safe place.

You can now kill the temporary container by pressing CTRL-C.

You should now claim your receiver:

  1. Go to https://www.planefinder.net/

  2. Create an account and/or sign in

  3. Go to "Account" > "Manage Receivers"

  4. Click "Add receiver" and enter your share code when prompted

Update .env file with sharing key

Inside your application directory (/opt/adsb), edit the .env file using your favourite text editor. Beginners may find the editor nano easy to use:

nano /opt/adsb/.env

This file holds all of the commonly used variables (such as our latitude, longitude and altitude). We're going to add our pfclient share code to this file. Add the following line to the file:

PLANEFINDER_SHARECODE=YOURSHARECODE

  • Replace YOURSHARECODE with the share code that was generated in the previous step.

For example:

PLANEFINDER_SHARECODE=zg84632abhf231

Deploying pfclient container

Open the docker-compose.yml file that was created when deploying ultrafeeder.

Append the following lines to the end of the file (inside the services: section):

  pfclient:
    image: ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefinder:latest
    # If you are running on a Raspberry Pi 5, uncomment the below line and comment out the above
    #ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefinder:5.0.161_arm64
    tty: true
    container_name: pfclient
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 30053:30053
    environment:
      - TZ=${FEEDER_TZ}
      - BEASTHOST=ultrafeeder
      - LAT=${FEEDER_LAT}
      - LONG=${FEEDER_LONG}
      - SHARECODE=${PLANEFINDER_SHARECODE}
    tmpfs:
      - /run:exec,size=64M
      - /var/log/pfclient

To explain what's going on in this addition:

  • We're creating a container called pfclient, from the image ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefinder:latest.

  • We're passing several environment variables to the container:

    • BEASTHOST=ultrafeeder to inform the feeder to get its ADSB data from the container ultrafeeder

    • TZ will use the FEEDER_TZ variable from your .env file.

    • LAT will use the FEEDER_LAT variable from your .env file.

    • LONG will use the FEEDER_LONG variable from your .env file.

    • SHARECODE will use the PLANEFINDER_SHARECODE variable from your .env file.

  • We're using tmpfs for volumes that have regular I/O. Any files stored in a tmpfs mount are temporarily stored outside the container's writable layer. This helps to reduce:

    • The size of the container, by not writing changes to the underlying container; and

    • SD Card or SSD wear

Once the file has been updated, issue the command docker compose up -d in the application directory to apply the changes and bring up the pfclient container. You should see the following output:

 ✔ Container ultrafeeder  Running
 ✔ Container piaware      Running
 ✔ Container fr24         Running 
 ✔ Container pfclient     Started

We can view the logs for the environment with the command docker compose logs, or continually "tail" them with docker compose logs -f. At this stage, the logs will be fairly unexciting and look like this:

pfclient          | [s6-init] making user provided files available at /var/run/s6/etc...exited 0.
pfclient          | [s6-init] ensuring user provided files have correct perms...exited 0.
pfclient          | [fix-attrs.d] applying ownership & permissions fixes...
pfclient          | [fix-attrs.d] done.
pfclient          | [cont-init.d] executing container initialization scripts...
pfclient          | [cont-init.d] 01-pfclient: executing...
pfclient          | [cont-init.d] 01-pfclient: exited 0.
pfclient          | [cont-init.d] done.
pfclient          | [services.d] starting services
pfclient          | [services.d] done.
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361261 [-] pfclient (4.1.1 i386) started with the following options:
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361432 [-]      connection_type = 1
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361437 [-]      tcp_address = ultrafeeder
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361440 [-]      tcp_port = 30005
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361442 [-]      data_format = 1
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361445 [-]      aircraft_timeout = 30
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361448 [-]      select_timeout = 10
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361450 [-]      web_server_port = 30053
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361454 [-]      user_latitude = -33.33333
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361458 [-]      user_longitude = 111.11111
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361539 [V] Performing NTP sync (1.planefinder.pool.ntp.org)...
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361679 [-] Web server is now listening on: http://172.99.7.64:30053
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.361698 [-] Echo port is now listening on: 172.99.7.64:30054
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.362179 [-] TCP connection established: ultrafeeder:30005
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.723215 [V] NTP sync succeeded with settings:
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.723269 [V]      Stratum: 3
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.723287 [V]      System clock time: 1586596473.7232
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.723299 [V]      Corrected clock time: 1586596473.7181
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:14:33.723310 [V]      NTP offset: -0.0052s
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:15:38.239652 [-] User location has been verified.
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:16:23.809962 [-] Successfully sent 46 aircraft updates across 10 packets (8.00KB)
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:18:14.117198 [-] Successfully sent 57 aircraft updates across 10 packets (9.00KB)
pfclient          | 2020-04-11 09:20:04.389081 [-] Successfully sent 53 aircraft updates across 10 packets (8.00KB)

Once running, you can visit http://docker.host.ip.addr:30053 to access the pfclient web interface. You can also visit the PlaneFinder website, and go to "Account" > "Manage Receivers" and click your receiver to see your live data and statistics.

Troubleshooting

If you are running a Raspberry Pi 5, then you may see the following messages in your Docker Compose log output:

pfclient      | [pfclient_daemon] /usr/local/bin/pfclient: error while loading shared libraries: 
pfclient      | [pfclient_daemon] /usr/local/bin/pfclient: error while loading shared libraries: 
pfclient      | [pfclient_daemon] /usr/local/bin/pfclient: error while loading shared libraries:

This is due to an architecture change with the Raspberry Pi 5 and can be worked around by using this Docker image in your docker-compose.yml file: ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-planefinder:5.0.161_arm64

This is noted in the sample provided above. See here for more information.

Advanced

If you want to look at more options and examples for the pfclient container, you can find the respository here

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