This is a client that selectively forwards Mode S messages to a server that resolves the transmitter position by multilateration of the same message received by multiple clients.
The corresponding server code is available at https://github.com/mutability/mlat-server.
There is also support for running in a mode used to feed multilateration information to FlightAware via piaware. In this mode, the client is started automatically by piaware.
To build a Debian (or Ubuntu, Raspbian, etc) package that includes config and startup scripts:
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential debhelper python3-dev
$ dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc
This will build a .deb package in the parent directory. Install it with dpkg:
$ sudo dpkg -i ../mlat-client_(version)_(architecture).deb
To build/install on other systems using setuptools (client only):
$ ./setup.py install
If you are using this with piaware, you don't need to do anything special other than to make sure that fa-mlat-client is available on your $PATH. piaware will detect the presence of the client and start it when needed.
If you are connecting to a third party multilateration server, contact the server's administrator for configuration instructions.
- Anything that produces Beast-format output with a 12MHz clock:
- dump1090_mr, dump1090-mutability, FlightAware's dump1090
- modesdeco (probably?)
- an actual Mode-S Beast
- airspy_adsb in Beast output mode
- SBS receivers
- Radarcape in 12MHz mode
- Radarcape in GPS mode
- The FlightRadar24 radarcape-based receiver. This produces a deliberately crippled timestamp in its output, making it useless for multilateration. If you have one of these, you should ask FR24 to fix this.
- pyserial sudo pip3 install pyserial
- pynmea2 sudo pip3 install pynmea2
Copyright 2015, Oliver Jowett.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.