current planes-----in a file?

[brianmc]

simple question?

Does the radarbox software output the current planes seen to a file that could be read by another program?

What does the file look like and is the location of the file fixed or flexible?

is this file created all the time  ie...everytime the software is loaded?

Thanks

[ACW367]

All the aircraft you see, are updated to MyLog.  The Mylog tab is above the map.  The tools menu of Mylog has a button to export to CSV.  You can then open the CSV file in Excel and manipulate it and save it wherever you wish.

Regards
ACW

[nortonbeak]

You can also use SQLite directly on the file. See this link

http://www.airnavsystems.com/forum/index.php?topic=3560.msg34588#msg34588

[brianmc]

Thanks for the help.

Does the program write to a file all the time, on its own   OR do you have to do it manually?

i only have the DEMO version of the program which quite useless as MOST of the features are disabled, for what reason I have no clue....

Thanks again,

[tarbat]

What exactly are you hoping to use the file for?  It may be that using the port 7879/30003 output may be more useful for you.

[brianmc]

i want to be able to read the planes' positions and evaluate where they are and announce on a radio system where they are, if I could see them. 

I have never written any code to read data on a PORT but maybe someone has already done this and would share it with us.

[DaveReid]

I have never written any code to read data on a PORT but maybe someone has already done this and would share it with us.

It sounds like you may have a fairly steep learning curve ahead of you.  Which host language are you planning to program in ?

If you simply want to familiarise yourself with the data coming out of the socket, then you can do that without any programming - just type  Telnet localhost 30003  at a DOS prompt.

I wouldn't waste time with the port 7879 output - it's very sparsely populated and not really that much use.

[brianmc]

yea Dave learning is always good tho! 

If the RadarBox software would create a file I would use PHP to put the data on the a web page....the computer that controls the radio uses Linux so some scripts would do the job there.

Reading a port is probably something different....but I have used C to program also.....I am not sure what would be the best.

I have also used MySql  and php together....when I use to read data from a flight tracking site and do all this but it was just not something they liked, and really I understand that, so that is why I want to have some idea what I would need to do before I buy a receiver.   

This area does NOT have a receiver at present.  So that would be an addition to the network...but I have some personal goals too.

Thanks for advice.

[tarbat]

If the RadarBox software would create a file

It does.  Goto MENU - FILE - START RECORDING, and it records the current aircraft, positions, altitudes, etc..

[DaveReid]

i want to be able to read the planes' positions and evaluate where they are and announce on a radio system where they are, if I could see them.

Are you trying to do this in real-time (which is what the above implies) or in retrospect ?

If the latter, then I would agree that the log file or database query approaches are going to be much easier than writing an application to capture the TCP/IP socket output, particularly if you haven't done anything like that before.

[tarbat]

Using TCP/IP sockets isn't as daunting as it first appears.  I went through this learning process a few months ago, writing a VB program to output on a socket.  There's plenty of resources on the net explaining how to use TCP/IP sockets.  For example, here's the code snippets I ended up using to output on port 1515

Code Select Expand

1. Imports
Imports System.Net.Sockets
Imports System.Text

2. Define the tcp client & server
Dim tcpshipserver As New TcpListener(1515)
Dim tcpshipclient As New TcpClient

3. Start server, and give control to a timer
tcpshipserver.Start()
Timer5.Interval = 100
Timer5.Start()

4. Timer checks for connections
If tcpshipserver.Pending Then
tcpshipclient = tcpshipserver.AcceptTcpClient
Timer5.Stop()

5. Send each message
Dim sendBytes As [Byte]() = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(MessageAIS)
Dim tcpshipstream As NetworkStream = tcpshipclient.GetStream
tcpshipstream.Write(sendBytes, 0, sendBytes.Length)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shipplotter/message/19123

[brianmc]

thanks everyone

a couple of points first

The record thing is ok but I suspect that I would have to start that each time the software is loaded (manually)......I would like to make it a little more predictable. 

The DEMO of the software is very much UNABLE to do any of these specific things.

I have done some research and PHP has socket commands that allow one to read and write to a socket.  I went as far as setting up a small script to create a server on a port and then used telnet to connect to it.  So I think based on that it is not that hard to get data from a socket with php.  At least I know a bit about php.

So I probably would read the data from the port and pump it into a mysql database.  From there all the scripts I had from before would make things very easy.

Now can someone tell me what the data coming out of port 30003 (radarbox) looks like...a captured file for a few minutes would be great.  If the captured file is similar to the socket data?

If anyone else wants to learn php and sockets you can go to this page

http://www.devshed.com/c/a/PHP/Socket-Programming-With-PHP/

I will warn you there are some small errors in this tutorial but easily fixed.

Thanks so much.

[DaveReid]

Now can someone tell me what the data coming out of port 30003 (radarbox) looks like...a captured file for a few minutes would be great.  If the captured file is similar to the socket data?

The RadarBox socket 30003 output emulates the original Kinetic SBS/BaseStation output on the same port.  That's documented here:  www.kinetic-avionics.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1402

[brianmc]

I have written a php script to read the data from the port....it is really very simple with php...I am still working on the details but I will take the details and create a personal web page showing my information for this area.