Aviation weather and traffic receiver based on RTL-SDR.
Credit for this update goes to @b3nn0. Original forked release. Stratux dev coffee fund.
With Stratux seeming to be in really good shape, the rate of updates has reduced a bit. However, it's time for a new, feature packed update to keep you busy after your return from Oshkosh. This one can even be installed OTA, without having to re-flash the SD card. EU and US versions are provided. The update file can be applied to any 1.6r1-eu028 EU or US version.
Stratux now fully supports the new EASA ADS-L draft standard: https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/downloads/137503/en Reception will be part of the OGN reception. So if OGN is enabled, you will also receive ADS-L. Transmission is achieved if you install a new OGN-Tracker firmware on your T-Beam, if equipped with one. To install it, follow the steps described here. Hopefully this will replace the myriad of different protocols on the 868Mhz band in Europe. Thanks to @pjalocha
The OGN Tracker firmware shipped with Stratux now also transmits FANET, typically used by paragliders.
If your Stratux is connected to the internet, Stratux can - optionally - subscribe to the OpenGliderNetwork and integrate received nearby aircraft into your traffic stream, thanks to @qubolino
If you are using an UBlox 8 GPS chip, Stratux now configures it to use GPS+Galileo+BeiDou, instead of GPS+Galileo+GLONASS, thanks @VirusPilot
Support for some additional MPU9xxx/MPU6xxx AHRS sensors, which just seem to be MPU9250 compatible, thanks to @susanneeichel
OpenFlightMaps offline map package have been updated and now also contains France, see here.
Some minor tweaks to the map layer chooser on the Map page
Unified log-viewer pages on the web interface to make it easier to find the correct link to also download system and trace logs
When re-flashing your Stratux, you can now simply backup and restore your stratux.conf file from/to the boot partition. Stratux will automatically import an existing stratux.conf from the boot partition and apply its configuration (e.g. set up the WiFi as configured, etc.)
Improved rotation of log files to not fill up the rather small in-memory filesystem
Improved compatibility of the X-Plane-compatible simulator output, now works correctly with all apps I had available for testing (Note: Garmin Pilot for Android works with it, but it doesn't support reception of traffic data from the simulator, so there is no point in using it like that)
Developer QoL feature: added "Trace logs" recording options, which will create a compressed log file recording all received data from GPS, ADS-B, UAT and OGN, can be replayed at different speeds and skipped forward. Helps a lot when debugging unique issues.
Experimental: Similar to the OGN-Tracker Firmware, Stratux now also ships a custom version of GxAirCom, which can be used as an alternative, thanks to @rvt. See here.
Experimental: Basic support for the new TTGO T-Beam S3 supreme running SoftRF
Experimental: Support for OGN reception on 915Mhz for the US. Stratux will select the frequency band automatically depending on location. There are still some rough edges with this, so don't rely on this always working correctly. Thanks to @pjalocha.
All credit for this update goes to B3enn0 https://github.com/b3nn0/stratux/releases/tag/v1.6r1-eu028
Mostly a maintenance and bugfix release. Due to the underlying OS change, however, there are no update.sh files for OTA updates available, and a re-flash of the Micro SD is required.
It is now possible to turn off the LoRa/OGN transmission capabilities of ogn-rx-eu, freeing up the PI's GPIO pins to be used for something else (e.g. TomBric's radar display)
There is now also an OGNTracker binary with SX1262 support, in case you have a SX1262 based T-Beam
If persistent logging is enabled (or the Stratux not yet rebooted), it is now possible to search for an aircraft that was previously received via OGN, for potential search&rescue purposes. To do so, you have to visit the OGN status page on port 8082.
Shutdown/reboot from the web interface now actually trigger a shutdown/reboot, instead of sync&powercycle
The "GDL90 bearingless target circle emulation" would also prevent bearingless targets being sent via NMEA if disabled. This has been fixed to now only affect GDL90 bearingless targets.
Hopefully a bit more robust "AP+Client" mode, thanks to @mpotthoff - but still experimental/unstable due to hardware/firmware constraints of the PI
Switched to new/stable RaspiOS aarch64 base image, adding experimental support for the Pi Zero 2W
Added rudimentary support for vector tile archives (mbtiles) to the integrated map - but not really usable for large maps due to theming
Switched to new esp32-ogn-tracker base for new Random ID handling
Updated dump1090
SafeSky
The developers of the "SafeSky" app have worked tirelessly to integrate well with Stratux. It is now possible to connect SafeSky with Stratux to create a unified GDL90 Stream for EFBs (e.g. SkyDemon), resulting in the best of both worlds:
Low latency and offline capabilities from Stratux
Mode-S/Mlat Position estimation, very high reception range and reception of even more traffic from SafeSky.
Check it out here
Garmin Pilot
Garmin has recently introduced support for Stratux in their "Garmin Pilot" app, and it seems to work fairly well.
All credit for this update goes to B3enn0 https://github.com/b3nn0/stratux/releases/tag/v1.6r1-eu027
Major update with lots of changes, so no update via .sh file - you will have to re-flash the SD card to install.
Bug Fixes
Technical Stuff
Known Issues
RaspberryPi Zero 2W Support Note that this release does NOT officially support the new PI Zero 2W. However, if you want to try it anyway, you can
¹ Apparently this was caused by hostapd. We now use wpa_supplicant to create the AP
You can either re-image the SD card, or use the provided .sh file to upgrade 1.6r1-eu025 to eu026. The .sh file can also be used to upgrade the eu025-US version.
Bug fixes
Serialout devices are now fixed to /dev/serialout0 and /dev/serialout_nmea0, which fixes issues that the device was not recognized sometimes
improved compatibility with mbtiles that have more exotic metadata
Reduced gain for 1090ES receiver to fix cases where very close aircraft were sometimes not received any more (slightly reduces 1090ES reception range)
Fixed a memory leak that would cause the Stratux service to crash when running for multiple days
Features
the mapdata directory is now writable by the user pi, so that it's easier to put custom map tile archives in there for novice linux users
the Map page now remembers your last layer configuration and re-enables the selected layers when revisiting the page
sdr-tool can now also be used to configure 868Mhz SDRs
Stratux is now using overlayfs and a read-only root partition to make it even more resistant to filesystem corruption. See below.
Added $RPYL NMEA message to provide AHRS data to EFBs that connect via NMEA (Sky-Map, XCSoar, ...?)
Stratux will now try to auto-detect baud rate of GPSes connected via prolific Serial/USB converters
Image size has been reduced by shrinking the partition after image creation and running zerofree to make it more compressible
You can now also download the US-settings image here, which is the same as the EU image except that "Developer Mode" and "OGN" are disabled and "UAT" is enabled by default.
Overlayfs details
By default, the root ext4 partition is now mounted read-only to /overlay/robase and overlayfs is used to create a 250MB in-memory file system overlay, which is then mounted as /. This means, that any changes made to the root filesystem will be lost on reboot. No writing to the Micro SD card will happen by default. To make this possible, the stratux.conf file was moved to /boot so it will remain editable. In case more low-level settings are changed (e.g. network), the /overlay/robase partition will be automatically remounted rw, then the settings will be written, synced and mounted back to read-only.
If you do not want all of this, you can disable all of this completely by enabling the toggle labeled Persistant logging:
After a reboot, the partitions will be mounted as in earlier versions. To temporarily remount /overlay/robase as read-write, you can use overlayctl unlock and overlayctl lock commands.
As the eu024 pre-release didn't show any new issues, this release now finalizes the pre-release. In addition to the changes mentioned in the pre-release, the final release features a better OSM offline map for the web interface, as well as the option to download US Sectional charts or OpenFlightMap Data for the EU. Also, the Stratux files are now almost completely self-contained in /opt/stratux, instead of installed all over the place.
Quite a significant update with many under-the-hood improvements, but also quite a few bug fixes and some user facing changes. Most notably, we are now using a 64 bit base operating system, which significantly improves quality of life for developers and reduces CPU usage of the PI. This also means that there will be no .sh update file for this version. You will need to re-image your SD card to install this update.
If you are using a T-Beam with OGN Tracker, I strongly recommend updating the firmware as well, as there were compatibility improvements with PilotAware.
Changes Important notes to EFB developers: Due to a bug, bearingless targets had the tail number "Mode<0x14>S" instead of "Mode<0x20>S" (note that 0x14 = decimal 20, so the bug was using decimal 20 instead of hexadecimal 20). If your EFB was using the well known tail number "Mode S" to draw a bearingless target circle with GDL90, please update your code to not only identify "Mode<0x14>S", but also "Mode<0x20>S". For GDL90, Stratux will now always report ellipsoid ownship altitude, as the spec. requires. This can not be changed in the web interface any more, as pretty much all EFBs seem to expect it like this by now. Features By default, Stratux will now write log files only to a temporary ram disk to safe your SD card in case of power loss. This can be changed from the web interface Added option to set transmit power for OGN Tracker (T-Beam), including disabling transmission Added support for MPU6500 AHRS chip as found on some recent GY-91 boards The default low resolution OSM Offline world map is now a lot more detailed. It's still low-res, but much better than before It is now possible to download additional offline map archives. Right now, this includes OpenFlightMaps (~700MB) for Europe and US VFR Sectional charts for the US (~5GB). See here for more details: https://github.com/b3nn0/stratux/wiki/Downloading-better-map-data General improvements Switched to new RaspiOS aarch64 base image Switched to latest librtlsdr Switched to go 1.16, with full usage of go modules to improve the build process Some improvements to the web interface code and help texts Disabled swap file to reduce SD card writes Updated dump1090 Minor improvements to Stratux EU case: more venting holes, rounded corners, slightly larger screw holes Ublox GPS LED PPS turned off to make it less distracting when night-flying On the PI4, Wifi-Direct is now forced to the 2.4Ghz band, instead of using the 5Ghz band, which is not compatible with older devices Direct browsers to a maximum cache timeout limit of 5 minutes, to reduce issues reported from not clearing browser cache after updates ogn-rx-eu startup is now delayed until a valid GPS time is received, as it could otherwise crash from time to time when the system time suddenly changes significantly Increased 868Mhz reception range by implementing error correction in ogn-rx Stratux is now installed almost completely self-contained to /opt/stratux, instead of all over the system - excluding system configuration (Wifi hotspot, DHCP, ...) The image doesn't ship with the source code any more. If you want to do development, you will have to clone it yourself Bugfixes Minor improvement to bearingless target selection to send to EFB Fixed bearingless target name "Mode S" (see notes to EFB developers above) Better handling of ICAO ID vs. non-ICAO ID for PilotAware targets Fixed some aircraft type codes in Flarm-NMEA protocol (drone, ground object) Fixed a potential crash if communication with your AHRS chip is unreliable Fixed issue that it was impossible to set the "Baro altitude offset" back to 0 once it was changed [OGN Tracker Firmware] Improved compatibility with original Pilot Aware Known issues The RaspiOS Kernel seems to log a lot of errors when using Wifi-Direct. This doesn't seem to cause any issues though. See here: raspberrypi/linux#4348 Due to the 64 bit requirement, this image will only run on the Pi 3B and newer. Older versions, or the Pi Zero are not supported and won't be supported in the future. OpenFlightMaps offline data is missing France - it's not downloadable from their website. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO CLEAR YOUR BROWSER CACHE AFTER INSTALLING THE NEW VERSION!
v1.6r1-eu023 with UAT enabled, developer mode disabled, OGN disabled.
AHRS2 support and GPS upgrades. Should resolve some AHRS drifting issues.
v1.6r1 with AHRS2 beta support.