mikenye/adsb-to-influxdb

Since creating this container, I've released: mikenye/readsb-protobuf. This container includes telegraf, and can export ADS-B data directly to InfluxDB, preventing the requirement (and performance overhead) of having to run an additional container for this function. I'd recommend using it if possible.

Pull ADS-B data from dump1090, readsb or another host that provides ADS-B data, and send to InfluxDB.

Supported input formats:

• Beast/BeastReduce (preferred)
• Basestation/SBS
• Raw
• JSON (from readsb)

This image is the spiritual successor to mikenye/piaware-to-influx, with the differences being:

mikenye/piaware-to-influx converts every single received ADS-B message to InfluxDB line protocol (and thus uses a fair amount of CPU resources).

Instead, this image (for each tracked aircraft) sends a digest of the latest received information at a predefined interval.

For this reason, this image uses significantly less system resources than mikenye/piaware-to-influx.

Furthermore, this image provides many additional tags/fields - see the InfluxDB Schema below.

This image works well with:

• mikenye/readsb
• mikenye/piaware

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 2/3/4)
• aarch64, arm64v8: ARMv8 64-bit (RPi 4)

Supported tags and respective Dockerfiles

• latest should always contain the latest released versions of telegraf and readsb. This image is built nightly from the master branch Dockerfile for all supported architectures.
• latest_nohealthcheck should always contain the latest released versions of telegraf and readsb as-per 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.
• Specific version and architecture tags are available if required, however these are not regularly updated. It is generally recommended to run latest.

Up-and-Running with docker run

Firstly, make sure all your hosts (influxdb, piaware/dump1090/readsb and the docker host that will run this container) have their clocks set correctly and are synchronised with NTP.

Next, you can start the container:

docker run \
 -d \
 --name adsb2influxdb \
 --restart=always \
 --tmpfs /run/readsb \
 -e INFLUXDBURL="http://<influxdb_host>:<influxdb_port>" \
 -e ADSBHOST="<readsb_host>" \
 -e TZ="<your_timezone>" \
 mikenye/adsb-to-influxdb

For example:

docker run \
  -d \
  --name=adsb2influxdb \
  --restart=always \
  --tmpfs /run/readsb \
  -e INFLUXDBURL="http://192.168.3.84:8086" \
  -e ADSBHOST="192.168.3.85" \
  -e TZ="Australia/Perth" \
  mikenye/adsb-to-influxdb

The container will attempt to connect to the readsb instance at 192.168.3.85 to receive ADS-B data via Beast protocol.

It will then convert the data to line protocol, and send to InfluxDB, using database adsb (which will be created if it doesn't exist).

Up-and-Running with Docker Compose

An example docker-compose.xml file is below:

version: '2.0'

services:
  adsb2influxdb:
    image: mikenye/adsb-to-influxdb:latest
    tty: true
    container_name: adsb2influxdb
    restart: always
    tmpfs: /run/readsb
    environment:
      - TZ="Australia/Perth"
      - INFLUXDBURL=http://192.168.3.84:8086
      - ADSBHOST=192.168.3.85

The container will attempt to connect to the readsb instance at 192.168.3.85 to receive ADS-B data via Beast protocol.

It will then convert the data to line protocol, and send to InfluxDB, using database adsb (which will be created if it doesn't exist).

Runtime Configuration Options

There are a series of available variables you are required to set:

Ports

No ports need to be mapped into this container. If you want to see the raw JSON data being sent to InfluxDB, you can map JSONPORT to the container, and connect using telnet or nc.

The container will need to be able to access:

• The source of ADS-B data on port 30005 by default, or any other port you specify with the ADSBPORT variable.
• If MLATHOST is set, the source of MLAT data on port 30105 by default, or any other port you specify with the MLATPORT variable.
• The InfluxDB server (however you specify in the INFLUXDBURL environment variable)

Telegraf

Telegraf runs in this container as well. It handles taking the data generated by readsb and writing it to InfluxDB. Telegraf is used because the clever folks at InfluxData are better at writing software that talks to InfluxDB than I am. It handles buffering, it handles InfluxDB temporarily being unavailable, and lots of other nifty features.

It also makes it very easy to port this to any other backend that telegraf can output to - just fork the container and modify the telegraf output script (which is generated via etc/cont-init.d/02-telegraf on container start).

InfluxDB retention policies

By default, when Telegraf creates a database, it uses the default retention policy. At the time of writing, with InfluxDB version 1.8, this means the data is kept indefinitely (0 seconds).

InfluxDB shell version: 1.8.0
> use adsb
Using database adsb
> show retention policies
name    duration shardGroupDuration replicaN default
----    -------- ------------------ -------- -------
autogen 0s       168h0m0s           1        true

You should configure a retention policy to prevent your database from growing to consume all available disk space. Accordingly, you will need to modify the retention policy yourself. For example, if you wanted to keep the last 30 days of data:

InfluxDB shell version: 1.8.0
> CREATE RETENTION POLICY "30_days" ON "adsb" DURATION 30d REPLICATION 1 DEFAULT
> use adsb
Using database adsb
> show retention policies
name    duration shardGroupDuration replicaN default
----    -------- ------------------ -------- -------
autogen 0s       168h0m0s           1        false
30_days 720h0m0s 24h0m0s            1        true

InfluxDB Measurement Schema

The following outlines the data schema, which should closely resemble the schema of dump1090/readsb's aircraft.json file.

See https://github.com/wiedehopf/readsb/blob/master/README-json.md#aircraftjson for further information.

adsb_icao & mlat measurements

Messages from a Mode S or ADS-B transponder, using a 24-bit ICAO address.

adsb_icao & mlat measurement Tags

adsb_icao & mlat measurement Fields

adsb_icao_nt measurement

Messages from an ADS-B equipped "non-transponder" emitter e.g. a ground vehicle, using a 24-bit ICAO address.

adsb_icao_nt measurement Tags

adsb_icao_nt measurement Fields

Visualising the data

A very simple visualisation would be to create a table showing recent squawks:

The JSON for this panel is as follows:

{
  "datasource": "adsb",
  "fieldConfig": {
    "defaults": {
      "custom": {
        "align": null
      },
      "thresholds": {
        "mode": "absolute",
        "steps": [
          {
            "color": "green",
            "value": null
          },
          {
            "color": "red",
            "value": 80
          }
        ]
      },
      "mappings": []
    },
    "overrides": [
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "flight"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 82
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Ident"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "Time"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 162
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Last Seen"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "hex"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 73
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "ICAO"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "last"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 84
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Lat"
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "degree"
          },
          {
            "id": "decimals",
            "value": 6
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "lon"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 73
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Lon"
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "degree"
          },
          {
            "id": "decimals",
            "value": 6
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "squawk"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 65
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Squawk"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "alt_baro"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 104
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Alt"
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "lengthft"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "geom_rate"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 86
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Alt Rate"
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "fpm"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "track"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 100
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Track"
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "degree"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "messages"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 98
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Msgs"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "rssi"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 91
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "dB"
          },
          {
            "id": "decimals",
            "value": 1
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "RSSI"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "gs"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 71
          },
          {
            "id": "unit",
            "value": "velocityknot"
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "Gnd Speed"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "matcher": {
          "id": "byName",
          "options": "ground"
        },
        "properties": [
          {
            "id": "custom.width",
            "value": 81
          },
          {
            "id": "displayName",
            "value": "On Ground"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  "gridPos": {
    "h": 7,
    "w": 24,
    "x": 0,
    "y": 0
  },
  "hideTimeOverride": false,
  "id": 2,
  "options": {
    "showHeader": true,
    "sortBy": [
      {
        "desc": false,
        "displayName": "ICAO"
      }
    ]
  },
  "pluginVersion": "7.0.3",
  "targets": [
    {
      "groupBy": [
        {
          "params": [
            "hex"
          ],
          "type": "tag"
        },
        {
          "params": [
            "flight"
          ],
          "type": "tag"
        },
        {
          "params": [
            "squawk"
          ],
          "type": "tag"
        },
        {
          "params": [
            "ground"
          ],
          "type": "tag"
        }
      ],
      "measurement": "adsb_icao",
      "orderByTime": "ASC",
      "policy": "default",
      "refId": "A",
      "resultFormat": "table",
      "select": [
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "lat"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          },
          {
            "params": [],
            "type": "last"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "lon"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "alt_baro"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "geom_rate"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "track"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "messages"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "rssi"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ],
        [
          {
            "params": [
              "gs"
            ],
            "type": "field"
          }
        ]
      ],
      "tags": []
    }
  ],
  "timeFrom": "5m",
  "timeShift": null,
  "title": "Squawks",
  "type": "table"
}

Getting help

Please feel free to open an issue on the project's GitHub.

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