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sdr-enthusiasts/acarshub

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Docker container to view ACARS, VDLM2 and HFDL messages.

We make extensive use of the airframes work to make the messages more 'human-readable' as well as provide more detail for each of the messages.

Builds and runs on amd64, arm64, arm/v7, arm/v6 and 386 architectures.

Table of Contents

Users of v2 that need to migrate to v3

Please see this for an example docker-compose.yaml file to get you started. You should be able to copy/paste values quickly over in to the new config and be up and running very quickly.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR BUSTER USERS

Please see this if you encounter RTC/Real Time Clock issues.

Pre-requisites/Totally new to docker but you think this looks cool

Welcome! New to docker but you love the idea of monitoring ACARS and/or ADSB data? You will to prepare your system to run this, but it's super easy!

You will need the following:

  • A Linux computer capable of running docker with the system installed and running. I personally recommend a raspberry Pi
  • At least one RTL-SDR Dongle. Two if you want to listen to both ACARS and VDLM. Something like this, although other kinds do work.
  • Docker and docker-compose installed. Please see installing docker and docker compose for help with that, and come back here when you're ready.

Supported tags and respective Dockerfiles

  • latest (master branch, Dockerfile.acarshub)
  • latest_nohealthcheck (masterbranch,Dockerfile.acarshub` patched to remove Heathcheck)
  • version specific (master branch at the time of build, Dockerfile.acarshub)
  • version specific no healthcheck (master branch at the time of build, Dockerfile.acarshub)

Thanks

Thanks to mikenye for his excellent ADSB docker containers from which I shamelessly copied a lot of the ideas for setting up the docker container, as well as his excellent work to move this project from its humble beginnings to what it is now.

Additional thanks goes to the folks over at airframes.io for their tireless work in figuring out what all of these ACARS messages mean and making their work available in usable packages.

I am missing a boat load of people who have provided feed back as this project has progressed, as well as contributed ideas or let me bounce thoughts off of them. You've all molded this project and made it better than I could have done on my own.

Getting valid ACARS/VDLM2 data

External to ACARS Hub you need to be running an ACARS and/or VDLM2 decoder for ACARS Hub, and have that decoder connect to ACARS Hub to send over the messages for processing.

The following decoders are supported:

  • acarsdec or one of the forks of acarsdec. I suggest the airframes fork. Run the decoder with the option -j youracarshubip:5550, ensuring that port 5550 is mapped to the container if the source is external to your docker network.
  • dumpvdl2. Run the decoder with the option --output decoded:json:udp:address=<youracarshubip>,port=5555, ensuring that port 5555 is mapped to the container if your source is external to the docker network.
  • vdlm2dec. Run the decoder with the option -j youracarshubip:5555, ensuring that port 5555 is mapped to the container if the source is external to the docker network.
  • dumphfdl. Run the decoder with the option --output decoded:json:udp:address=<youracarshubip>,port=5556, ensuring that port 5556 is mapped to the container if the source is external to the docker network..

For VDLM decoding dumpvdl2 is preferred as the decoder provides richer data and is more modern than vdlm2dec.

For ease of use I have provided docker images set up to work with ACARS Hub. This is the preferred way to get data in to ACARS Hub.

  • docker-acarsdec for ACARS decoding.
  • docker-dumpvdl2 for VDLM decoding. This is the preferred decoder.
  • docker-vdlm2dec as an alternative for VDLM decoding. This decoder is far less feature-rich compared to dumpvdl2 and is provided only as an alternative if you have a strong preference for using this over dumpvdl2.
  • docker-dumphfdl for HFDL decoding.
  • acars_router for routing ACARS messages from one source to another. This is useful if you have a decoder that can only send messages to one destination, but you want to send messages to multiple destinations. This is the preferred way to get data in to ACARS Hub.

Up-and-Running

The document below covers a lot of configuration options, however, most of them are not needed to get started. Please see this for an example docker-compose.yaml file that should get you off the ground.

Ports

Port Description
80 Port used for the web interface
5550/udp Port used for pushing ACARS JSON data to
5555/udp Port used for pushing VDLM2 JSON data to
5556/udp Port used for pushing HFDL JSON data to
15550 Port used for exposing JSON ACARS data
15555 Port used for exposing JSON VDLM2 data
15556 Port used for exposing JSON HFDL data

Volumes / Database

It is recommended to give the container a volume so that database and message data is persisted between container restarts/upgrade. If you wish to persist this database between container restarts, mount a volume to /run/acars/.

The database is used on the website for various functions. It is automatically pruned of data older than 7 days old.

The reality of running any kind of database on a Pi is that database performance can be lacking. I have found that a database that has seven days worth of data, on a moderately busy site like mine, can reach file sizes of 17Mb and have 112,000+ rows of data. In other words, an awful lot of data, and with database sizes that large you will see a degradation in search performance. Queries might take a few seconds to execute after you type your search terms on the search page.

If you set DB_SAVEALL to a blank value you will gain back a lot of performance because messages with no informational value won't be stored. The trade-off in disabling saving all messages means you won't have all messages logged which may or may not be important to you.

It is also recommended you use a tmpfs mount to reduce SD card writes.

Environment variables

There are quite a few configuration options this container can accept.

General

Variable Description Required Default
FEED Used to toggle feeding to ACARS.io. Set to true to enable feeding. No false
ENABLE_WEB Enable the web server. true to enable, any other value will disable it. No true
DB_SAVEALL By default the container will save all received messages in to a database, even if the message is a blank message. If you want to increase performance/decrease database size, set this option to false to only save messages with at least one informationial field. No true
DB_SAVE_DAYS By default the container will save message data for 7 days. If you wish to over-ride this behavior, set this to the number of days you wish to have retained. No 7
DB_ALERT_SAVE_DAYS By default the container will save message data for 120 days. If you wish to over-ride this behavior, set this to the number of days you wish to have retained. No 120
DB_BACKUP If you want to run a second database for backup purposes set this value to a SQL Alchemy formatted URL. See the link for supported DB types. This database will have to be managed by you, as ACARS Hub will only ever write incoming data to it. No Blank
IATA_OVERRIDE Override or add any custom IATA codes. Used for the web front end to show proper callsigns; See below on formatting and more details why this might be necessary. No Blank
TAR1090_URL Flights where the container is able to, it will generate a link to a tar1090 instance so that you can see the position of the aircraft that generated the message. By default, it will link to ADSB Exchange, but if desired, you can set the URL to be a local tar1090 instance. No Blank
AUTO_VACUUM If you find your database size to be too large you can temporarily enable this and on the next container startup the database will attempt to reduce itself in size. When you do this startup time will take a few minutes. It is recommended to leave this flag disabled and only enable it temporarily. No False
ALLOW_REMOTE_UPDATES If you do not want to allow users to update the alert terms (and potentially other things in the future) via the web interface, set this to False No True
FLIGHT_TRACKING_URL If you want to link to a flight tracking site other than Flight Aware, set this to the URL of the site you want to link to. The url should be formatted to accept tail numbers at the end of the URL. No Blank

Please note that for TAR1090_URL the required format is http[s]://**HOSTNAME** only. So if your tar1090 instance is at IP address 192.168.31.10 with no SSL, the TAR1090_URL would look like http://192.168.31.10

Logging

By default ACARS Hub will only show errors, warnings, and other kinds of critical messages in the logs. This can be changed by setting MIN_LOG_LEVEL to a higher number.

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

Variable Description Required Default
MIN_LOG_LEVEL Acceptable values are 3-5. 3 is Warnings/Critical/Errors, 4 adds Informational messages and 5 adds everything previous plus debug messages. No 3
QUIET_MESSAGES By default the decoders will not output their received messages to the container logs. If you want to see these messages in the logs set QUIET_MESSAGES to false. No true

ADSB

The ACARS Hub website contains the ability to display ADSB targets along side ACARS messages. To enable this feature you need to have an available aircraft.json file generated from readsb and available on tar1090webserverurl/data/aircraft.json. Mike Nye's tar1090 is the recommended container to run to easily get this data. By turning this on you will get a map that shows the ADSB targets picked up by your readsb instance and enable you to click on planes to see what messages they've sent.

The following options will set the options for ADSB

Variable Description Required Default
ENABLE_ADSB Turns on ADSB in ACARS Hub Yes, if you want to monitor ADSB false
ADSB_URL The IP address or URL for your tar1090 instance No (see note below) http://tar1090/data/aircraft.json
ADSB_LAT The latitude of your ADSB site No, but recommended 0
ADSB_LON The longitude of your ADSB site No, but recommended 0
DISABLE_RANGE_RINGS Turn off range rings on your map. Set to true to disable range rings. No false

If you run Mike's tar1090 container on the same machine as ACARS Hub then the default value for ADSB_URL is fine. If you don't, the formatting for ADSB_URL should be the full URL path to aircraft.json from your readsb source.

If you desire enhanced ADSB and ACARS message matching and thus show coloured aircraft icons on Live Map, and are running Mike's tar1090 container, you can enable the following option:

- TAR1090_ENABLE_AC_DB=true

In the configuration options for tar1090. Setting this will include additional aircraft information in the aircraft.json file that is not normally part of the ADSB broadcast, such as the aircraft's tail number and aircraft type. Please enable this with caution: there is increased memory usage in the tar1090 container so RAM constrained systems should be cautious enabling this.

ACARS

Variable Description Required Default
ENABLE_ACARS Toggle ACARS decoding on. If set to external this will enable ACARS processing in the container. Push valid ACARS json data to UDP port 5550 (needs port mapping 5550:5550/udp). No false

VDLM2

Variable Description Required Default
ENABLE_VDLM Toggle VDLM decoding on. If set to external this will enable VDLM processing in the container. Push valid VDLM2 data to UDP port 5555 (needs port mapping 5555:5555/udp). No false

HFDL

Variable Description Required Default
ENABLE_HFDL Toggle HFDL decoding on. If set to external this will enable HFDL processing in the container. Push valid HFDL data to UDP port 5556 (needs port mapping 5556:5556/udp). No false

Viewing the messages

The container implements a basic web interface, listening on port 80, which will show messages as they are received.

If QUIET_MESSAGESis disabled, received messages are also logged to the container log.

Which frequencies should you monitor

The ACARS.io/Airframes.io website has a great list of community derived frequencies that aircraft typically will broadcast ACARS/VDLM on, and what regions those are applicable to. The values provided in the example docker-compose/docker run example above are frequencies I have found to be good in the United States, with a decent level of traffic. I imagine the list is not complete, and could be refined better.

Some notes about frequencies:

  • acarsdec is limited to monitoring 16 frequencies apiece, while dumpvdl2 has no limit besides your available processing power
  • The spread of frequencies for each decoder has to be within 2 Mhz.

A note about data sources used for the web site

A brief primer on some terms:

  • All ACARS/VDLM broadcasts that have a callsign appended to the message will use a two letter airline code

  • IATA is a two letter airline identification code. Many airlines don't actually have an IATA code and use their own internal code.

  • ICAO is an international standard, unique-across-the-world three letter airline code.

In order to make the website more usable, I have included a database used by the container to convert the two airline codes used in the messages from IATA to ICAO codes, and to show their long-form name. This data was found from public, free sources. The data had some errors in it, some of which was due to the age of the data, and some of it is due to airlines not always using the correct IATA codes in their broadcoast messages.

My observations are US centric, but from what I have seen there are "errors" you might notice in the converted callsigns.

  • US Airlines that have acquired airlines as part of mergers (for instance, American Airlines/AA/AAL, who has, among others, merged with America West/US/AWE) would show up as their legacy callsign if the aircraft being picked up was part of the airline that was merged in to the bigger airline. I've selectively fixed some of these errors because the IATA code of the legacy airline was not in use by anyone else.

  • Some airlines (UPS and FedEx, particularlly, among others) don't use their designated IATA callsigns period, or seem to be using contracted planes which are using an alternative two letter airline code in their message.

  • There are three IATA code regions that cover the world. If an airline flies only in one region, and another flies in a separate region, those airlines are allowed to use the same IATA code. The airline code generated from the database might use the wrong IATA code because of this.

So what this means is you will occasionally see callsigns on the web front end that are wrong. The above mentioned UPS will show up BHSxxxx/BahamasAir which is obviously not right, at least for my part of the world. I am hesitant to "fix" too many of these "errors" in the database because this container is being used all around the world.

The end result of this is that in messages where the airline code is improperly mapped the Flight Aware link generated will lead to the wrong flight. The TAIL link generated should be correct.

The Fix

If you add in the ENV variable IATA_OVERRIDE you can change your local web site to display the correct airline for your region.

Formatting is as follows: IATA|ICAO|Airline Name

If you have multiple airlines you wish to override, you add in a ; between them, such as the following: UP|UPS|United Parcel Service;US|AAL|American Airlines

For anyone in the US, I suggest adding IATA_OVERRIDE=UP|UPS|United Parcel Service to start out with.

If there are airlines you notice that are wrong because the data used is wrong (IATA codes do change over time as airlines come and go), or airlines that are missing from the database that do have an IATA code, submit a PR above and I'll get it in there!

Accessing ACARS/VDLM data with external programs

If you wish to access the JSON data that the decoders acarsdec and dumpvdl2 generate with an external program expose the following ports in your docker-compose configuration:

  • Port 80 for the web site
  • Port 15555 for UDP VDLM2 JSON
  • Port 15550 for UDP ACARS JSON

YAML Configuration for Ports

ports:
  - 80:80
  - 5550:5550/udp
  - 5555:5555/udp
  - 15550:15550
  - 15555:15555

And then you will be able to connect to yourpisipaddress:15555 or yourpisipaddress:15550 respectively, in whatever program can decode ACARS/VDLM JSON.

Website tips and tricks

  • On the Live Message page pressing the p key on your keyboard will pause the message updates so you can catch up. Pressing p again will cause the page to refresh again and display messages as they come in.
  • On the search page enter your search terms and then press enter to start the search.

Future improvements

ACARS decoding appears to be in active development, and as such, I expect a lot of movement in data-visualization and presentation to happen. This container will follow those developments and add in functionality as it appears.

The following features are in active development:

  • A fresh new look to the website
  • Desktop application to view the data

Getting Help

You can log an issue on the project's GitHub or visit the discord server.