PilotAware compatibility
The test unit has SoftRF LoRa module connected.
A picture of the module (purple) in comparison with NRF905 (green):
Test SoftRF unit has D99C19 device ID and is configured to communicate in accordance with P3I Open protocol:
On this screenshot the SoftRF unit is detected by PilotAware and is shown with SkyDemon:
The link partner is a DIY PilotAware "bridge" been temporarily built on top of a Stratux assembly.
Instead of purchasing a commercial PilotAware Bridge I've made my own by using NiceRF SV610 and MPL3115A2 (baro) modules being connected to Raspberry Pi 2 with jumper wires.
SV610 is a low Tx-power (100mW) version of the SV650 (400mW CE) module which is actually in use by genuine PilotAware Bridge.
The Raspberry PI is driven by PilotAware-OGN software that was downloaded using this reference page:
http://wiki.glidernet.org/wiki:add-pilotaware-uplink
PilotAware-OGN sits on top of a locally deployed OGN receiver installation (ogn-rf + ogn-decode).
It is using PilotAware Bridge hardware (in Rx) to catch PAW traffic and RTL-SDR (OGN-R) to catch FLARM/OGN one.
It is also using the PilotAware Bridge Tx-capability to uplink OGN local traffic data toward local PAW aircrafts.
When the PilotAware-OGN is running normally, it typically looks like this:
PilotAware-OGN is having a built-in webserver and is listening on port number 8082.
Here is how the status page looks like:
You can see on the picture above that the PilotAware-OGN has registered three local reporting stations.
- first one of them (ID F7FB35) - is a SoftRF unit operating in DIY OGN tracker mode ;
- second one (ID D99C19) is another SoftRF unit but in PilotAware mode ;
- and the third one (ID FCA567) - is a SoftRF instance number three running in "Legacy" (FLARM) mode.
And when I open live tracking page of the OGN site - I can see all these three different objects simultaneously:
Approximately every 20 seconds the PilotAware-OGN ground station is transmitting a P3I radio "beacon" packet
which contains location of the station.
"Aircraft type" specified in this packet is 1F and "aircraft address" is equal to three least significant bytes of the Raspberry PI Ethernet adapter's MAC address.
In my case the ground station's address is: 374780
Even if there is no any PilotAware traffic flying around - reception of these regular P3I station beacons is sufficient to validate SoftRF's basic P3I Rx compatibility.
NMEA data from the SoftRF unit gets delivered to XCSoar app.
This is a screenshot of the "radar screen":
