sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radarbox

Docker container running AirNav RadarBox's rbfeeder. Designed to work in tandem with sdr-enthusiasts/readsb-protobuf. Builds and runs on x86_64, arm64 and arm32v7.

rbfeeder pulls ModeS/BEAST information from a host or container providing ModeS/BEAST data, and sends data to RadarBox.

For more information on what rbfeeder is, see here: sharing-data.

Supported tags and respective Dockerfiles

• latest (main branch, Dockerfile)
• latest_nohealthcheck is the same as the latest version above. However, this version has the docker healthcheck removed. This is done for people running platforms (such as Nomad) that don't support manually disabling healthchecks, where healthchecks are not wanted.
• Version and architecture specific tags available

Multi Architecture Support

Currently, this image should pull and run on the following architectures:

• amd64: Linux x86-64
• arm32v7, armv7l: ARMv7 32-bit (Odroid HC1/HC2/XU4, RPi 2B/3B)
• arm64, aarch64: ARMv8 64-bit (RPi 4 64-bit OSes)

Obtaining a RadarBox Sharing Key

First-time users should obtain a RadarBox sharing key.

In order to obtain a RadarBox sharing key, on the first run of the container, rbfeeder will generate a sharing key and print this to the container log.

timeout 300s docker run \
    --rm \
    -it \
    -e BEASTHOST=YOURBEASTHOST \
    -e LAT=YOURLATITUDE \
    -e LONG=YOURLONGITUDE \
    -e ALT=YOURALTITUDE \
    ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radarbox:latest

This will run the container for five minutes, allowing a sharing key to be generated.

You should obviously replace YOURBEASTHOST, YOURLATITUDE, YOURLONGITUDE and YOURALTITUDE with appropriate values.

Shortly after the container launches, you should be presented with:

[2020-04-02 11:36:31]  Empty sharing key. We will try to create a new one for you!
[2020-04-02 11:36:32]  Your new key is g45643ab345af3c5d5g923a99ffc0de9. Please save this key for future use. You will have to know this key to link this receiver to your account in RadarBox24.com. This key is also saved in configuration file (/etc/rbfeeder.ini)

Take a note of the sharing key, as you'll need it when launching the container.

If you're not a first time user and are migrating from another installation, you can retrieve your sharing key using either of the following methods:

• SSH onto your existing receiver and run the command rbfeeder --showkey --no-start
• SSH onto your existing receiver and run the command grep key= /etc/rbfeeder.ini

Up-and-Running with docker run

docker run \
 -d \
 --rm \
 --name rbfeeder \
 -e TZ="YOURTIMEZONE" \
 -e BEASTHOST=YOURBEASTHOST \
 -e LAT=YOURLATITUDE \
 -e LONG=YOURLONGITUDE \
 -e ALT=YOURALTITUDE \
 -e SHARING_KEY=YOURSHARINGKEY \
 ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radarbox:latest

You should obviously replace YOURBEASTHOST, YOURLATITUDE, YOURLONGITUDE, YOURALTITUDE and YOURSHARINGKEY with appropriate values.

For example:

docker run \
 -d \
 --rm \
 --name rbfeeder \
 -e TZ="Australia/Perth" \
 -e BEASTHOST=readsb \
 -e LAT=-33.33333 \
 -e LONG=111.11111 \
 -e ALT=90 \
 -e SHARING_KEY=g45643ab345af3c5d5g923a99ffc0de9 \
 ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radarbox:latest

Please note, the altitude figure is given in metres and no units should be specified.

Up-and-Running with Docker Compose

version: '2.0'

services:
  rbfeeder:
    image: ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radarbox:latest
    container_name: rbfeeder
    restart: always
    environment:
      - TZ=Australia/Perth
      - BEASTHOST=readsb
      - LAT=-33.33333
      - LONG=111.11111
      - ALT=90
      - SHARING_KEY=g45643ab345af3c5d5g923a99ffc0de9

Claiming Your Receiver

Once your container is up and running, you should claim your receiver.

1. Go to https://www.radarbox.com/
2. Create an account or sign in
3. Claim your receiver by visiting https://www.radarbox.com/raspberry-pi/claim and following the instructions

Connection Errors

Before raising an issue regarding connection errors, please wait at least 10 minutes. The rbfeeder binary is configured to attempt to connect to a collection of servers in a round-robin method. It appears normal for some servers to reject the connection, so it may take several minutes to find an available server and connect. In the example below, it took approximately 6 minutes from container start to connection established.

You can try to solve this by setting this parameter:

- RB_SERVER=true

This will enforce the use of a hardcoded IP address that is known to work (as of 22-Nov-2023). It will connect you to a European server if you are located in the Eastern Hemisphere (incl Asia/Oceania), or to a US based server if you are in the Americas.

You may also receive a spurious error Error authenticating Sharing-Key: Invalid sharing-key. Provided you have entered your sharing key correctly, just ignore this for several minutes.

Here is some example output with RBFeeder Version 1.0.10 (build 20231120150000) showing the aforementioned behaviour:

[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]  Starting RBFeeder Version 1.0.10 (build 20231120150000)
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]  Using configuration file: /etc/rbfeeder.ini
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]  Network-mode enabled.
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]     Remote host to fetch data: 172.20.0.11
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]     Remote port: 30005
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]     Remote protocol: BEAST
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]  Using GNSS (when available)
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.966][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]  Start date/time: 2023-11-22 21:59:06
[2023-11-22 21:59:06.972][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:06]  Socket for ANRB created. Waiting for connections on port 32088
[2023-11-22 21:59:08.039][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:08]  Connection established.
[2023-11-22 21:59:18.154][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 21:59:18]  Could not start connection. Timeout.

...

[2023-11-22 22:05:29.223][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 22:05:29]  Connection established.
[2023-11-22 22:05:29.456][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 22:05:29]  Client type: Raspberry Pi
[2023-11-22 22:05:29:29.524][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 22:05:29]  Connection with RadarBox24 server OK! Key accepted by server.
[2023-11-22 22:05:29.524][rbfeeder] [2023-11-22 22:05:29]  This is your station serial number: EXTRPIxxxxxx

Runtime Environment Variables

There are a series of available environment variables:

Environment Variable	Purpose	Default
BEASTHOST	Required. IP/Hostname of a Mode-S/BEAST provider (dump1090/readsb)	readsb
BEASTPORT	Optional. TCP port number of Mode-S/BEAST provider (dump1090/readsb)	30005
UAT_RECEIVER_HOST	Optional. IP/Hostname of an external UAT decoded JSON provider (eg: dump978-fa).
UAT_RECEIVER_PORT	Optional. TCP port number of the external UAT decoded JSON provider.	30979
SHARING_KEY	Required. Radarbox Sharing Key
LAT	Required. Latitude of the antenna
LONG	Required. Longitude of the antenna
ALT	Required. Altitude in metres
TZ	Optional. Your local timezone	GMT
STATS_INTERVAL_MINUTES	Optional. How often to print statistics, in minutes.	5
VERBOSE_LOGGING	Optional. Set to true for no filtering of rbfeeder logs.	false
DEBUG_LEVEL	Optional. Set to any number between 0 and 8 to increase verbosity of rbfeeder logs.	0
ENABLE_MLAT	Option. Set to true to enable MLAT inside of the container. See MLAT note below	true
MLAT_RESULTS_BEASTHOST	a hostname or IP, where MLAT results should be sent. (disables 30105 results listen port)
MLAT_RESULTS_BEASTPORT	a port number, specify the TCP port number where MLAT results should be sent.	30104
RB_SERVER	Optional. If set to true, the container will attempt to connect to one of two Radarbox Servers that are known to work as of 22-Nov-2023. You can also explicitly set it to a hostname or IP address. If unset, the default settings of RadarBox will be used.	Unset

Ports

The following TCP ports are used by this container:

• 32088 - rbfeeder listens on this port, however I can't find the use for this port...
• 30105 - mlat-client listens on this port to provide MLAT results. (mlat results listen port disabled when MLAT_RESULTS_BEASTHOST is set to work around rbfeeder bug)

MLAT

You may find that MLAT in your container will often times spit out errors in your logs, such as

[rbfeeder] Disconnecting from mlat1.rb24.com:40900: No data (not even keepalives) received for 60 seconds
[rbfeeder] Connected to multilateration server at mlat1.rb24.com:40900, handshaking

This is likely, but not always, not caused by anything you are doing, but is instead caused by the Radarbox server itself and as such there isn't anything you can do to fix it. You will see in your Radarbox stats very little, if any, MLAT targets from your feeder while it is doing this.

To stop the feeder from spamming your logs you can set ENABLE_MLAT=false in your environment configuration for Radarbox and it will stop the MLAT service, and the log messages. Please note that if you do this, and you use MLAT Hub please remove Radarbox from your READSB_NET_CONNECTOR under MLAT Hub.

Using the container on a Raspberry Pi 5

The container internally uses a binary called rbfeeder to send data to the RadarBox service. This binary is provided as closed-source by AirNav (the company that operates RadarBox) and is only available in armhf (32-bit) format using 4kb kernel pages. This will work well on Raspberry Pi 3B+, 4B, and other ARM-based systems that use either 32-bits or 64-bits Debian Linux with a 4kb kernel page size. It also works well on x86 Linux where we use the qemu ARM emulator to run the binary.

Debian Linux for Raspberry Pi 5 uses by default a kernel with 16kb page sizes, and this is not compatible with the rbfeeder binary. You will see failures in your container logs.

You can check your kernel page size with this command: getconf PAGE_SIZE . If the value returned is 4096, then all is good. If it is something else (for example 16384 for 16kb page size), you will need to implement the following work-around:

Add the following to /boot/firmware/config.txt (Debian 12 Bookworm or later) or /boot/config.txt (Debian 11 Bullseye or earlier) to use a kernel with page size of 4kb. This will make CPU use across your Raspberry Pi 5 slightly less efficient, but it will solve the issue for many software packages that have the same issue. After changing this, you must reboot your system for it to take effect:

kernel=kernel8.img

(a one-time command to add this would be:)

echo "kernel=kernel8.img" | sudo tee -a /boot/firmware/config.txt >/dev/null

Logging

• All processes are logged to the container's stdout, and can be viewed with docker logs [-f] container.

Getting Help

You can log an issue on the project's GitHub.

I also have a Discord channel, feel free to join and converse.

If you're getting continual segmentation faults inside this container, see: #16 (comment)