ACARS for Linux possible?

[bobruzzo]

I have been struggling to get an ACARS program to install on my Linux computer. I am using up to date Mx Linux (Debian). I keep running into problems with pretty much everything involved with building a program. I am not good at it. I tried acarsdec and keep getting errors that files missing or some other things. Is there a step by step DETAILED working tutorial on how to do this? Some of the instructions are easy to follow but always get some kind of compilation error then I dont know where to look for missing files or where to put them. I have easily installed other radio programs for ham radio with no problems. But this acars has got me at my wits end!

 

[lwvmobile]

Copy and paste the cmake and make errors you get when you are trying to build it. It could be something simple like not having one of the dependencies listed installed on your system. Its also possible that the packages you have installed on your system are a newer or different version than what the software lists and causes build error to occur.

Also, do you have a link to the software you are trying to build. I found a github for the acarsdec you mentioned, but can only assume its the same you are talking about. In the meantime, I'll attempt to build this software myself in a VM, and see what happens.

 

[lwvmobile]

Also, what kind of hardware are you going to use this with, RTL, Airspy, or SDRPlay, seems each of those have their own extra dependencies for building, namely, the API for SDRPlay and drivers which you may or may not already have if you have a device already up and running in Linux.

 

[nd5y]

I have tried building Linux programs from source before an never had any luck either.
One thing I know is you need to install these before you try to compile and build anything. In some distros they aren't installed by default. I don't know offhand if MX includes them.
gcc
make
build-essential
checkinstall

 

[lwvmobile]

Okay, I have a VM with MX Linux 19, so hopefully you have the same, just went through the steps and build the software. Seemed pretty straight forward, no issues for me, so I made a step by step guide, you should hopefully be able to use it to get it working like I did. I'm also assuming you were using acarsdec from GitHub - TLeconte/acarsdec: ACARS SDR decoder

Just copy all of step one code and run it, then copy steps 2 and 3 line by line and copy and paste them into your terminal.

step 1
install all requirements, if using SDRPlay, probably install the API from the official website first if building for that, don't have one, can't test it

sudo apt install build-essential git cmake libusb-1.0-0-dev librtlsdr-dev gr-osmosdr librtlsdr0 libairspy-dev libairspyhf-dev libairspyhf1 libairspy0 zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev

step 2 (optional, but you may want it)
install libacars for decoding ATS applications

git clone https://github.com/szpajder/libacars
cd libacars
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

step 3 (clone and make acarsdec, delete previous attempt directory first)

step 3 (clone and make acarsdec, delete previous attempt directory first)
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/TLeconte/acarsdec
cd acarsdec
mkdir build
cd build

//pick one of the below//
//if building for rtlsdr//
cmake .. -Drtl=ON

//if building for airspy
cmake .. -Dairspy=ON

//if making for sdrplay (need to install api first, not handled here)
cmake .. -Dsdrplay=ONcmake .. -Dsdrplay=ON
//now finish up and viola

make
sudo make install

Hopefully that will get you up and going.

 

[lwvmobile]

Also, don't know much about what the difference is between ACARS and ADS-B data, but you might also be interested in dump1090, which is something I've used before in the past. Got interested again, so I just whipped up a quick install guide for you as well.

sudo apt install dump1090-mutability lighttpd
sudo lighty-enable-mod dump1090
sudo service lighttpd force-reload

dump1090-mutability --interactive --net --write-json /run/dump1090-mutability

//open second terminal and run below command then close it
//only need to do this once

sudo chmod 777 /run/dump1090-mutability

//doing chmod 777 because dump1090 attempts to write aircraft.json to a folder it doesn't have permission to write into
//ctrl+c to kill dump1090 thread and re-run

dump1090-mutability --interactive --net --write-json /run/dump1090-mutability


//Open web browser and go to http://localhost/dump1090/gmap.html

 

[bobruzzo]

Also, what kind of hardware are you going to use this with, RTL, Airspy, or SDRPlay, seems each of those have their own extra dependencies for building, namely, the API for SDRPlay and drivers which you may or may not already have if you have a device already up and running in Linux.

THANK YOU!!! I will try this in morning! The errors I got were some missing dependencies and a "cmake" error. I am using an RTL-SDR dongle. I do have it working fine with SDR Trunk, JS8call, FLdigi....so the dongle is working ok. I was using acarsdec from GitHub.

 

[lwvmobile]

THANK YOU!!! I will try this in morning!

Well, just keep us up to date and let us know how it worked out for you. In the meantime, anybody got any frequencies I should monitor in North Florida area, or is it just the universal ones for the United States? I was able to build that software successfully, but I didn't give it an honest try out to see what all it does since I didn't know what to actually tune to.

 

[bobruzzo]

Well, just keep us up to date and let us know how it worked out for you. In the meantime, anybody got any frequencies I should monitor in North Florida area, or is it just the universal ones for the United States? I was able to build that software successfully, but I didn't give it an honest try out to see what all it does since I didn't know what to actually tune to.

Thank you. 131.550 always worked for me using acarsd and sdr sharp in Windows. Before I start I just have a few questions/concerns. I do not use a VM. I am using a dedicated Linux computer. Also I do not understand this: " step 3 (clone and make acarsdec, delete previous attempt directory first) " Not sure what "attempt directory" is.

 

[lwvmobile]

Not sure what "attempt directory" is.

If you had already attempted to build it and had a directory in your home directory where it was cloned and attempted to be built into, I thought I saw a note that if you try to rebuild it, to wipe the previous folder first. In other words, if you already have a acarsdec folder, delete it first before running that step. Also, just helps to have a fresh slate just in case. So, if you have a acarsdec folder, just delete it before starting step 3.

If you have call cmake .. -Dxxx one time, the option will be sticky . Remove build dir and redo to change sdr option.

 

[lwvmobile]

131.550 always worked for me

Yep, I got something right away as soon as I put that one in. I probably could get some more if I had the correct antenna type hooked up to my dongle.

 

[bobruzzo]

If you had already attempted to build it and had a directory in your home directory where it was cloned and attempted to be built into, I thought I saw a note that if you try to rebuild it, to wipe the previous folder first. In other words, if you already have a acarsdec folder, delete it first before running that step. Also, just helps to have a fresh slate just in case. So, if you have a acarsdec folder, just delete it before starting step 3.

OK thanks, simple enough.

 

[bobruzzo]

Yep, I got something right away as soon as I put that one in. I probably could get some more if I had the correct antenna type hooked up to my dongle.

View attachment 111072

There is another freq, sort of an alternate or something. Here is some info: ACARS - The RadioReference Wiki I use an OMNI X scanner antenna but I have used even indoor antennas. We live below flight path of (northeast/southeast) corridor of planes going to and from NYC and Boston. So most antennas will work where I live.

 

[lwvmobile]

There is another freq, sort of an alternate or something.

Oh okay, I thought there were multiple ones to be used. Good thing with the acarsdec software is that you can specify multiple frequencies, just as long as they all fall within the 2.048Mhz or 2.4Mhz bandwidth sampling the dongle can do.

Yeah, I just have my two dongles connected to an 800Mhz antenna and set up for that range, my VHF setup is on my file server, maybe I should just install acarsdec on that so I can get a better view of things.

 

[morfis]

Generally and advantage of acarsdec/acarsdeco is that they can decode on multiple frequencies at the same time if within the bandwidth of the sdr being used. You can therefore include any other freqs within about 2Mhz of bandwidth with a cheap rtl device or 8 MHz for something like an Airspy R2.
The ACARS page linked in the wiki is pretty poor...you'll find better and more detailed frequency information with a simple websearch.
Usage of 'legacy' ACARS is decreasing quickly and if you have a second rtl device then the addition of dumpvdl2 (see szpajder - Overview) to your software armoury is worthwhile (if only one device available I'd go with VDL2 rather than legacy ACARS).

If looking at ADS-B then there are better decoders than mutability (such as the flightaware version...which you can use without having to do a full flightaware feeder setup if you just want their version of dump1090)

 

[lwvmobile]

If looking at ADS-B then there are better decoders than mutability (such as the flightaware version...which you can use without having to do a full flightaware feeder setup if you just want their version of dump1090)

Yeah, I was looking at the flightaware version yesterday. I was having issues with setup all the way around, so just ended up settling on mutability since its already in the repo. Seems like flightaware has a better html frontend for sure. I think I was just super exhausted and trying to stay awake until night time so I was just making all sorts of errors when setting it up, so I just had to settle, and also wanted to keep it simple and as few steps as possible for that little tidbit.

 

[bobruzzo]

Yeah, I was looking at the flightaware version yesterday. I was having issues with setup all the way around, so just ended up settling on mutability since its already in the repo. Seems like flightaware has a better html frontend for sure. I think I was just super exhausted and trying to stay awake until night time so I was just making all sorts of errors when setting it up, so I just had to settle, and also wanted to keep it simple and as few steps as possible for that little tidbit.

Well so far so good but when building the ADS-B program I ran into this issue in picture:

 

[lwvmobile]

Well so far so good but when building the ADS-B program I ran into this issue in picture:

Try running that in another terminal while dump1090 is running

 

[bobruzzo]

Try running that in another terminal while dump1090 is running

OK thats what I did....there is another process running in 1st terminal, look in first pic.......I then opened a second terminal and entered that code "sudo chmod 777 /run/dump1090-mutability" (without quotes) and got this error......."

"chmod: cannot access '/run/dump1090-mutability': No such file or directory" I guess I need to locate the folders /run/dump1090-mutability

 

[lwvmobile]

OK thats what I did....there is another process running in 1st terminal, look in first pic.......I then opened a second terminal and entered that code "sudo chmod 777 /run/dump1090-mutability" (without quotes) and got this error......."

"chmod: cannot access '/run/dump1090-mutability': No such file or directory" I guess I need to locate the folders /run/dump1090-mutability

Hmmm..try running

sudo mkdir /run/dump1090-mutability
sudo chmod 777 /run/dump1090-mutability

The only reason we need to do this step is for the HTML web interface, it tries to read a file that is supposed to be logged into this folder, but for some reason it doesn't have access by default, or at-least thats the issue I was having yesterday and this fixed that. When you run that code, open the web browser and see if the map is showing you flights in your area. You might have to drag the map to your location if you didn't put in your local coordinates.