Radarcape:Radarcape Major 2 Feeder Installation

Radarcape Software Features (Major Release 2)

The Radarcape software of Major 2 gives you many new features, like a new web interface, new feeders and new interfaces. See Radarcape:Software_Features_Major2 for more information. You will recognize that there is a ".02", ".02D" or ".02A" at the end of the version string while Major 1 is ".01", ".01D" or ".01A".

Flightradar24 feeder is still in the fully supported version like in Major 1 release. There are no changes, however we don't get back MLAT results from FR24.

One major difference is that the FlightAware feeder now is realized by installing the official piAware package in the background. The internal HTTP based feeder is obsolete in Major 2 and was removed. This has influence in the installation procedure. Luckily the effort doing has the benefit that Radarcape can now read back MLAT results from this feeder.

The feeder package given out by Planefinder was not tested by us and there is no guarantee that it works on Major 2. One successful test was done by one early user, but at the moment I do not support the package officially. The HTTP based feeder of Major 1 release is however still present in the Major 2.

The update and even backward step to Major 1 has been done many times but we never know the status of all Radarcapes out in the field and there might be surprises, that is why we recommend the procedure below for updating.
Especially, once you have installed the FlightAware package, Major 1 is not recommended as base. If by any means you need a Major 1 running but you have already piAware in the background, please disable it with the Linux shell command systemctl stop piaware

We only tested the features on Debian. There surely are problems with Angstrom, especially the up- and download of databases and some othes will currently fail. Please think about updating to Debian in this case or help us to identify the missing features. Not at least the piAware package for FlightAware is not available for Angstrom.

Basic installation

As long as not beeing given by default, simply overwrite the given version string in the Configuration - Mainteneance menu with the Radarcape release string you have got from Radarcape support and perform an update.

This will not yet have the Flightaware feeder within. Please wait for some hours, enjoying the new features and observe stability.

Then download the current piAware 3.3.0 package from FlightAware or from Radarcape server.

Important! Your Radarcape must have an internet connection while performing the steps described below!

Go to Settings - Software Maintenance - Manual File Upload and select the piAware package with the right side Upload and Install, press the [Submit] button below. This will take a while and install some more packages.

After this, go to Settings - Feeders and enable FlightAware Feeder.

You then can go to Status - FlightAware and then see the feeder status. First three of the four fields will be green quickly, while the MLAT often needs some time until it is green. After that has happened you can also see incoming MLAT messages from the piAware feeder. Aircraft localized by FlightAware MLAT will be shown with a green color border and flight path in the 2D maps and with "FlaWa" source in the aircraft list. (BTW, Radarcape MLAT aircraft will show up with a red border and path)

In case that this works, you may apply for a free or charge key to our Radarcape MLAT server. Please contact Radarcape support for such.