Stratux 1.6r1-eu029 by b3nn0 (US and EU versions)

It's been a while..

Credit for this update goes to @b3nn0. Original forked release.
Stratux dev coffee fund.

With Stratux seeming to be in really good shape, the rate of updates has reduced a bit. However, it's time for a new, feature packed update to keep you busy after your return from Oshkosh.
This one can even be installed OTA, without having to re-flash the SD card. EU and US versions are provided. The update file can be applied to any 1.6r1-eu028 EU or US version.

New Features

• Stratux now fully supports the new EASA ADS-L draft standard: https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/downloads/137503/en
  Reception will be part of the OGN reception. So if OGN is enabled, you will also receive ADS-L.
  Transmission is achieved if you install a new OGN-Tracker firmware on your T-Beam, if equipped with one. To install it, follow the steps described here.
  Hopefully this will replace the myriad of different protocols on the 868Mhz band in Europe. Thanks to @pjalocha

• The OGN Tracker firmware shipped with Stratux now also transmits FANET, typically used by paragliders.

• If your Stratux is connected to the internet, Stratux can - optionally - subscribe to the OpenGliderNetwork and integrate received nearby aircraft into your traffic stream, thanks to @qubolino

• If you are using an UBlox 8 GPS chip, Stratux now configures it to use GPS+Galileo+BeiDou, instead of GPS+Galileo+GLONASS, thanks @VirusPilot

• Support for some additional MPU9xxx/MPU6xxx AHRS sensors, which just seem to be MPU9250 compatible, thanks to @susanneeichel

• OpenFlightMaps offline map package have been updated and now also contains France, see here.

• Some minor tweaks to the map layer chooser on the Map page

• Unified log-viewer pages on the web interface to make it easier to find the correct link to also download system and trace logs

• When re-flashing your Stratux, you can now simply backup and restore your stratux.conf file from/to the boot partition. Stratux will automatically import an existing stratux.conf from the boot partition and apply its configuration (e.g. set up the WiFi as configured, etc.)

• Improved rotation of log files to not fill up the rather small in-memory filesystem

• Improved compatibility of the X-Plane-compatible simulator output, now works correctly with all apps I had available for testing (Note: Garmin Pilot for Android works with it, but it doesn't support reception of traffic data from the simulator, so there is no point in using it like that)

• Developer QoL feature: added "Trace logs" recording options, which will create a compressed log file recording all received data from GPS, ADS-B, UAT and OGN, can be replayed at different speeds and skipped forward. Helps a lot when debugging unique issues.

• Experimental: Similar to the OGN-Tracker Firmware, Stratux now also ships a custom version of GxAirCom, which can be used as an alternative, thanks to @rvt. See here.

• Experimental: Basic support for the new TTGO T-Beam S3 supreme running SoftRF

• Experimental: Support for OGN reception on 915Mhz for the US. Stratux will select the frequency band automatically depending on location. There are still some rough edges with this, so don't rely on this always working correctly. Thanks to @pjalocha.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed SSL errors when downloading of map data files if the Stratux did not have a GPS position since startup
• Fixed a rare race condition/crash when checking disk usage
• Allow ! in wifi SSID, thanks to @ptimoney
• Fixed the OpenAIP online map layer not working any more after some changes to their server infrastructure
• Some fixes to GPS satellites display when receiving BeiDou, thanks @VirusPilot
• Some tweaks to UART GPS support and baud rate detection, thanks to @sternflyer and @rush0815

Stratux Europe Edition 1.6r1-eu028-us

All credit for this update goes to B3enn0 https://github.com/b3nn0/stratux/releases/tag/v1.6r1-eu028

Mostly a maintenance and bugfix release.
Due to the underlying OS change, however, there are no update.sh files for OTA updates available, and a re-flash of the Micro SD is required.

Features

• It is now possible to turn off the LoRa/OGN transmission capabilities of ogn-rx-eu, freeing up the PI's GPIO pins to be used for something else (e.g. TomBric's radar display)

• There is now also an OGNTracker binary with SX1262 support, in case you have a SX1262 based T-Beam

• If persistent logging is enabled (or the Stratux not yet rebooted), it is now possible to search for an aircraft that was previously received via OGN, for potential search&rescue purposes. To do so, you have to visit the OGN status page on port 8082.

Bug Fixes

• Shutdown/reboot from the web interface now actually trigger a shutdown/reboot, instead of sync&powercycle

• The "GDL90 bearingless target circle emulation" would also prevent bearingless targets being sent via NMEA if disabled. This has been fixed to now only affect GDL90 bearingless targets.

• Hopefully a bit more robust "AP+Client" mode, thanks to @mpotthoff - but still experimental/unstable due to hardware/firmware constraints of the PI

Under the Hood

• Switched to new/stable RaspiOS aarch64 base image, adding experimental support for the Pi Zero 2W

• Added rudimentary support for vector tile archives (mbtiles) to the integrated map - but not really usable for large maps due to theming

• Switched to new esp32-ogn-tracker base for new Random ID handling

• Updated dump1090

Noteworthy News

SafeSky

The developers of the "SafeSky" app have worked tirelessly to integrate well with Stratux. It is now possible to connect SafeSky with Stratux to create a unified GDL90 Stream for EFBs (e.g. SkyDemon), resulting in the best of both worlds:

• Low latency and offline capabilities from Stratux

• Mode-S/Mlat Position estimation, very high reception range and reception of even more traffic from SafeSky.

• Check it out here

Garmin Pilot

Garmin has recently introduced support for Stratux in their "Garmin Pilot" app, and it seems to work fairly well.

Stratux Europe Edition 1.6r1-eu027 (With US settings)

All credit for this update goes to B3enn0 https://github.com/b3nn0/stratux/releases/tag/v1.6r1-eu027

Major update with lots of changes, so no update via .sh file - you will have to re-flash the SD card to install.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a long standing issue that could cause EFBs to detect a very brief disconnect when using GDL90 or X-Plane protocol¹
• Fixed aircraft symbols on map being drawn underneath MBTiles overlays
• AHRS messages are now only sent via NMEA if an AHRS is actually connected
• Fixed an issue that Wifi-Direct would only work if "Persistent Logging" is enabled first
• New Features
• [Experimental] Added WiFi AP+Client mode. You can configure your Stratux to e.g. connect to your home network while still creating an AP (see known issues). Includes internet pass-through for devices that connect to the Stratux AP (with help from @mpotthoff)
• [Experimental] Support for sc16is752 i2c to serial chip for NMEA-out
• [Experimental] It is now possible to directly connect an RFM95/Lora module/hat to the PI's SPI pins for OGNTP/PilotAware-Out
• [Experimental] Added support for receiving AIS Data from ships - requires an additional SDR if enabled (thanks @rvt)
• Allow setting Wifi regulatory country to be able to connect to specific Wifi networks
• Added a PID-based fan control algorithm for more fine-grained and precise fan control (thanks @rvt)
• Added a few icons to the integrated map to differentiate between large aircraft, small aircraft, helicopters, gliders, balloons and hang gliders/parachutes (thanks to SimpleVFR for providing them)
• Added support for new TTGO T-Beam models with a new QinHeng USB-serial chip
• Added basic support for SoftRF T-Echo as NMEA source (no sat/precision information)
• Stratux now sends "Hard=STX" and software version via OGN. If a target that sends Hard=STX is received, a little Stratux icon is displayed on the Traffic page. This makes it possible to know when you receive another Stratux user as traffic
• Show error message if users enables more protocols than he has SDRs for
• Allow hot-plugging of UAT Radio
• If your Stratux has an internet connection (e.g. via WiFi client mode), it will now automatically serve as an OGN station, publishing other aircraft (and your own position) via APRS

Technical Stuff

• DHCP server now never sets a DNS or default gateway. This can allow some devices to use mobile data while connected to the Stratux (this was previously possible via the "Wifi Smart" option - it is now always the case and the option was removed)
• Switched to wpa_supplicant to create the AP
• We now also read the ARP cache to determine where to send GDL90/X-Plane messages, so we can actually auto-discover hosts when in client mode in some instances
• Switched from isc-dhcp-server to dnsmasq to have DNS caching capabilities when in AP+Client mode
• Improved bootup speed
• Stratux does now not send a "PASS?" passwod request to NMEA-Clients (TCP port 2000) - all EFBs seem to be fine with that these days
• Switched to dump1090 6.1 and go 1.17.1
• Completely reworked network and serial handling (GDL90/NMEA/X-Plane). It now prioritizes important messages over less important ones and should work fine even over very slow serial or TCP connections.
• Enabled log rotation for stratux.log file
• Switched to a new RaspiOS base image (based on bullseye)

Known Issues

• When using AP+Client mode, it can sometimes become impossible to connect to the AP with some devices, or the connection becomes slow and contains errors. This is caused by buggy Wifi Chip Firmware and can probably not be fixed on our side. AP+Client mode is therefore considered experimental and "you get what you get". If you have issues you will have to live with it. Experience shows that it seems to be more stable when only using the 2.4Ghz band without automatic channel selection

RaspberryPi Zero 2W Support
Note that this release does NOT officially support the new PI Zero 2W. However, if you want to try it anyway, you can

• Use a card reader to mount the Micro SD card in your PC
• Mount the BOOT partition
• Copy the file bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb to bcm2710-rpi-zero-2.dtb
• After that, Stratux SHOULD boot and work correctly, but there was no further testing done. If you try it and have something noteworthy to report, feel free to join the discussion of this release.

¹ Apparently this was caused by hostapd. We now use wpa_supplicant to create the AP

Stratux Europe Edition 1.6r1-eu026 (With US settings)

You can either re-image the SD card, or use the provided .sh file to upgrade 1.6r1-eu025 to eu026. The .sh file can also be used to upgrade the eu025-US version.

Bug fixes

• Serialout devices are now fixed to /dev/serialout0 and /dev/serialout_nmea0, which fixes issues that the device was not recognized sometimes

• improved compatibility with mbtiles that have more exotic metadata

• Reduced gain for 1090ES receiver to fix cases where very close aircraft were sometimes not received any more (slightly reduces 1090ES reception range)

• Fixed a memory leak that would cause the Stratux service to crash when running for multiple days

Features

• the mapdata directory is now writable by the user pi, so that it's easier to put custom map tile archives in there for novice linux users

• the Map page now remembers your last layer configuration and re-enables the selected layers when revisiting the page

• sdr-tool can now also be used to configure 868Mhz SDRs

• Stratux is now using overlayfs and a read-only root partition to make it even more resistant to filesystem corruption. See below.

• Added $RPYL NMEA message to provide AHRS data to EFBs that connect via NMEA (Sky-Map, XCSoar, ...?)

• Stratux will now try to auto-detect baud rate of GPSes connected via prolific Serial/USB converters

• Image size has been reduced by shrinking the partition after image creation and running zerofree to make it more compressible

• You can now also download the US-settings image here, which is the same as the EU image except that "Developer Mode" and "OGN" are disabled and "UAT" is enabled by default.

Overlayfs details

By default, the root ext4 partition is now mounted read-only to /overlay/robase and overlayfs is used to create a 250MB in-memory file system overlay, which is then mounted as /. This means, that any changes made to the root filesystem will be lost on reboot. No writing to the Micro SD card will happen by default. To make this possible, the stratux.conf file was moved to /boot so it will remain editable. In case more low-level settings are changed (e.g. network), the /overlay/robase partition will be automatically remounted rw, then the settings will be written, synced and mounted back to read-only.

If you do not want all of this, you can disable all of this completely by enabling the toggle labeled Persistant logging:

After a reboot, the partitions will be mounted as in earlier versions.
To temporarily remount /overlay/robase as read-write, you can use overlayctl unlock and overlayctl lock commands.

v1.6r1-eu025 with US settings

As the eu024 pre-release didn't show any new issues, this release now finalizes the pre-release.
In addition to the changes mentioned in the pre-release, the final release features a better OSM offline map for the web interface, as well as the option to download US Sectional charts or OpenFlightMap Data for the EU. Also, the Stratux files are now almost completely self-contained in /opt/stratux, instead of installed all over the place.

Quite a significant update with many under-the-hood improvements, but also quite a few bug fixes and some user facing changes.
Most notably, we are now using a 64 bit base operating system, which significantly improves quality of life for developers and reduces CPU usage of the PI.
This also means that there will be no .sh update file for this version. You will need to re-image your SD card to install this update.

If you are using a T-Beam with OGN Tracker, I strongly recommend updating the firmware as well, as there were compatibility improvements with PilotAware.

Changes
Important notes to EFB developers:
Due to a bug, bearingless targets had the tail number "Mode<0x14>S" instead of "Mode<0x20>S" (note that 0x14 = decimal 20, so the bug was using decimal 20 instead of hexadecimal 20). If your EFB was using the well known tail number "Mode S" to draw a bearingless target circle with GDL90, please update your code to not only identify "Mode<0x14>S", but also "Mode<0x20>S".
For GDL90, Stratux will now always report ellipsoid ownship altitude, as the spec. requires. This can not be changed in the web interface any more, as pretty much all EFBs seem to expect it like this by now.
Features
By default, Stratux will now write log files only to a temporary ram disk to safe your SD card in case of power loss. This can be changed from the web interface
Added option to set transmit power for OGN Tracker (T-Beam), including disabling transmission
Added support for MPU6500 AHRS chip as found on some recent GY-91 boards
The default low resolution OSM Offline world map is now a lot more detailed. It's still low-res, but much better than before
It is now possible to download additional offline map archives. Right now, this includes OpenFlightMaps (~700MB) for Europe and US VFR Sectional charts for the US (~5GB). See here for more details: https://github.com/b3nn0/stratux/wiki/Downloading-better-map-data
General improvements
Switched to new RaspiOS aarch64 base image
Switched to latest librtlsdr
Switched to go 1.16, with full usage of go modules to improve the build process
Some improvements to the web interface code and help texts
Disabled swap file to reduce SD card writes
Updated dump1090
Minor improvements to Stratux EU case: more venting holes, rounded corners, slightly larger screw holes
Ublox GPS LED PPS turned off to make it less distracting when night-flying
On the PI4, Wifi-Direct is now forced to the 2.4Ghz band, instead of using the 5Ghz band, which is not compatible with older devices
Direct browsers to a maximum cache timeout limit of 5 minutes, to reduce issues reported from not clearing browser cache after updates
ogn-rx-eu startup is now delayed until a valid GPS time is received, as it could otherwise crash from time to time when the system time suddenly changes significantly
Increased 868Mhz reception range by implementing error correction in ogn-rx
Stratux is now installed almost completely self-contained to /opt/stratux, instead of all over the system - excluding system configuration (Wifi hotspot, DHCP, ...)
The image doesn't ship with the source code any more. If you want to do development, you will have to clone it yourself
Bugfixes
Minor improvement to bearingless target selection to send to EFB
Fixed bearingless target name "Mode S" (see notes to EFB developers above)
Better handling of ICAO ID vs. non-ICAO ID for PilotAware targets
Fixed some aircraft type codes in Flarm-NMEA protocol (drone, ground object)
Fixed a potential crash if communication with your AHRS chip is unreliable
Fixed issue that it was impossible to set the "Baro altitude offset" back to 0 once it was changed
[OGN Tracker Firmware] Improved compatibility with original Pilot Aware
Known issues
The RaspiOS Kernel seems to log a lot of errors when using Wifi-Direct. This doesn't seem to cause any issues though. See here: raspberrypi/linux#4348
Due to the 64 bit requirement, this image will only run on the Pi 3B and newer. Older versions, or the Pi Zero are not supported and won't be supported in the future.
OpenFlightMaps offline data is missing France - it's not downloadable from their website.
PLEASE MAKE SURE TO CLEAR YOUR BROWSER CACHE AFTER INSTALLING THE NEW VERSION!

v1.6r1-eu023 with US settings and AHRS2 support

v1.6r1-eu023 with UAT enabled, developer mode disabled, OGN disabled.

AHRS2 support and GPS upgrades. Should resolve some AHRS drifting issues.

v1.6r1 with AHRS2 beta support

v1.6r1 with AHRS2 beta support.

Bug fixes.

• Removed some log messages.
• Added ublox9 detection (for testing).

Interface additions. Bug fixes.

• Wi-Fi settings (SSID, passphrase) added to "Settings" menu in webui.
• AHRS display -- shows "Red X" when AHRS invalid.
• AHRS "Set Level" and "Zero Drift" (calibrate gyros) consolidated to AHRS page.
• Better SD card management (log rotation, reduced log writes).

New UAT radio support.

• Adds support for new low power UAT radio.
• Minor bug fixes.