Welcome to Flarmradar

While the transmission protocol of the FLARM devices are proprietary (and unusable for our purpose), the ​Data Port Specification is public. The Flarm-Radar project uses the data available on the devices Data Port, just like any 3rd party product.

This wiki should become a source of knowledge for the Flarmradar-Project.

Server

... still needs some writing :-)

Client

The concept of the client software is quite simple. It reads the Data Port from a regular FLARM device (RS232 interface) and streams the data (via the HTTP protocol) to the server which does all computing. Since data streaming does not require much computing power, a mini-computer like the ​Raspberry PI is sufficient. This is a credit-card sized computer that is able to run a Debian-based operating system (Raspbian). The costs for a such a device are negligible (50$ or so).

Infrastructure & Assembly

We used the following components to build up our client infrastructure. Note that links provided are just proposals for your convenience, other components will also work.

• a FLARM device
• a power adapter and data cable for the FLARM device, we use currently this ​update cable
• a ​Raspberry PI
• a USB charger to power the Raspberry, just make sure it can deliver at least 1000mA
• optional, recommended for a stationary installation: we use currently an ​external antenna

Troubleshooting

• The raspberry-specific issues are collected on a separate page.

Client Software Installation

Download the client and follow the ​installation procedure to install the client software.

The client software is written in Perl and should therefore be portable on any platform where perl runs.