LiveATC Discussion Forums

Air Traffic Monitoring => Feed Setup Pictures => Topic started by: numloxx on August 28, 2013, 08:53:04 PM

Title: YPPH Feed setup
Post by: numloxx on August 28, 2013, 08:53:04 PM
Good Morning all,

First time poster, hope I get it right :)

For those of you following me on twitter @numloxx you will have noticed the feed being down for a few days, this was because the computer running it finally died. I've replaced it with a Raspberry Pi board, and thanks to Dave I was able to get it all up and running.

---(http://)-


I applied a firmware update to the Raspberry Pi (Micro Computer) that runs the stream, so the audio popping should be gone now, and volume is a bit louder.

For those of you interested in the details behind the feed, until a few days ago, it was running on a Dell Optiplex GX520 desktop computer, which is a massive power drain to have running 24/7 for the past 2-3 years.

Thanks to a helpful and generous fan, who sent me a Raspberry Pi with a few cables etc, I have managed to get it up and running.
The Raspberry Pi microcomputer board costs about $35USD and runs a version of Debian Linux, called Raspian.
The only other purchase was a USB Sound card, because the Raspi only has a 3.5mm audio out. It has a Creative Sound Blaster Play, and was very simple to setup.
The whole setup now runs on just a Micro USB mobile phone charger, the powerpack for the Uniden Scanner, and the powered speakers (Which are only used for troubleshooting).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi)

Photo of the YPPH LiveATC Feed setup
https://www.dropbox.com/s/np4f0qmdk2jzlv4/2013-08-29%2008.33.04.jpg (https://www.dropbox.com/s/np4f0qmdk2jzlv4/2013-08-29%2008.33.04.jpg)



Thank you for your patience while the stream was down, I'm hoping that this setup will run for many years to come, but if it does go down, the costs involved in replacing it are extremely low compared to the previous setup.

I'm toying with the idea of setting up several of these, so that we can have separate Tower/Ground/Approach/MelCtr feeds, but this will have to wait a few weeks.

Regards,

Carsten
Title: Re: YPPH Feed setup
Post by: vk6hdx on September 02, 2013, 02:12:41 AM
Thanks for posting the write-up and picture.  The feed sounds great now that the firmware issue has been resolved.

Hopefully this encourages more people to set up their own LiveATC feeds given the cheap cost of these units and the low power consumption.

Well done on getting it all working.

Cheers,
Troy
Title: Re: YPPH Feed setup
Post by: SQWK7700 on September 02, 2013, 05:07:34 PM
Hi Carsten. Thanks for the info. I often listen to your feed. I'm now inspired to get my Pi configured to replace the Dell laptop that I'm currently using for the YMML, YMEN and YMMB feeds. I may PM you some time if I have an issue but sounds like its relatively straight forward to get set up. Ordering the USB sound card today!!
Cheers Darrin
Title: Re: YPPH Feed setup
Post by: numloxx on October 04, 2013, 03:14:41 AM
Hi all,

I've had some emails from other feed providers asking how I setup my feed. Well most of the hard work was done by Dave @ LiveATC, but I will go through all the steps that I can remember.

1. Obtain a Raspberry Pi
2. Purchase a USB sound card. I bought the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Play - http://uk.creative.com/p/sound-blaster/sound-blaster-play
3. Do the hard work as follows:

First of all boot your Raspi, plug in a monitor into the HDMI and a Keyboard and Mouse into the USB ports and a network cable.
Plug in the power, it'll boot up and let you login.

Follow the directions from this website to compile Darkice - http://www.t3node.com/blog/live-streaming-mp3-audio-with-darkice-and-icecast2-on-raspberry-pi/

Obtain a darkice.cfg - Dave can help with this.

You can also grab a startup script in case the service goes down.

sudo wget -O /etc/init.d/darkice http://dl.liveatc.net/darkice.init.pi

Then you can execute the startup script like this:

/etc/init.d/darkice restartifdown

If you create a cron entry /etc/cron.d/liveatc it should contain this line:

* * * * *  root  /etc/init.d/darkice restartifdown >/dev/null 2>&1



That's about it, so hopefully this will help you all out.
I setup my box before a 3 week holiday, so I may have forgotten a step somewhere, but it's simple enough to work out :)

Title: Re: YPPH Feed setup
Post by: numloxx on October 04, 2013, 03:21:50 AM
Sorry and I forgot to add, there is a USB Sound patch that fixes some issues.
I applied  that as well.

http://www.raspyfi.com/raspberry-pi-usb-audio-fix/