Added support for BladeRF Micro on dump1090

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elafargue
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 10:08 am

Added support for BladeRF Micro on dump1090

Post by elafargue »

Hi all,

TL;DR; -> Just a quick heads up, I just submitted a pull request for the flightaware version of dump1090 to add support for the BladeRF 2.0 Micro, you can find it at : https://github.com/flightaware/dump1090/pull/37 . if someone with a BladeRF '1.0' can test that it doesn't break that version, that would be great.

Long version: though dump1090 supports BladeRF natively (I'm not speaking about the custom FPGA image, just standard SDR support through libbladerf), it did not with with the BladeRF 2.0 micro because it calls a lot of BladeRF1-specific API's that fail on the BladeRF 2.0 micro. Also, it did not support enabling the Bias Tee on the 2.0 micro, which is useful if you use a LNA.

This pull request now detects what type of BladeRF you are using, so that dump1090 works with both BladeRF versions. It also adds a "--bladerf-biastee" option if you want to enable bias voltage on the RX port.

Looking forward to feedback!

Ed

PS: strangely, when using the BT200 LNA on my BladeRF, the decoding rates goes down about 20% for some reason. My setup is a 1090MHz antenna on the roof, LMR400 cable, a filter, then the LNA. Not ideal - LNA/filter should be placed on the antenna side - but here you go. if anyone's got an idea why that might be, I'd be interested.
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